Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Science, Culture, & Humanities => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on January 09, 2007, 08:14:19 AM
-
All:
I suppose I could have put this very important topic on the Political Forum, but I have decided to put it here where I am hoping it will get the attention it deserves.
Marc
=====================
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...=2007701080415
Quote:
U.S. may check Web use
Privacy advocates challenge push to track sites visited
January 8, 2007
BY JOHN REINAN
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
The federal government wants your Internet provider to keep track of every Web site you visit.
For more than a year, the Justice Department has been in discussions with Internet companies and privacy rights advocates, trying to come up with a plan that would make it easier for investigators to check records of Web traffic.
The idea is to help law enforcement officials track down child pornographers. But some see it as another step toward total surveillance of citizens -- joining warrantless wiretapping, secret scrutiny of library records and unfettered access to e-mail as another power that could be abused.
"I don't think it's realistic to think that we would create this enormous honeypot of information and then say to the FBI, 'You can only use it for this narrow purpose,' " said Leslie Harris, executive director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington, D.C.-based group that promotes free speech and privacy in communication.
"We have an environment in which we're collecting more and more information on the personal lives of Americans, and our laws are completely inadequate to protect us."
Need to safeguard children
So far, no concrete proposal has emerged, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has made it clear that he would like to see quick action.
In testimony before a Senate committee in September, Gonzales painted a disturbing picture of child pornography on the Web.
But federal agents and prosecutors are hampered in their investigations because Internet companies don't routinely keep records of their traffic, he told the committee.
Gonzales also pushed for Internet records tracking in a speech at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in April.
"Privacy rights must always be accommodated and protected as we conduct our investigations," he said.
But, he said, "the investigation and prosecution of child predators depends critically on the availability of evidence that is often in the hands of Internet service providers.
"This evidence will be available for us to use only if the providers retain the records for a reasonable amount of time."
Rationales differ
Internet service providers typically keep records of Web traffic for 30 to 90 days, as a way to trace technical glitches. Many ISPs and privacy advocates say it's already easy for government agents to get the information they need to investigate crimes.
The FBI, without a court order, can send a letter to any Internet provider ordering it to maintain records for an investigation, said Kevin Bankston, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based group that promotes free speech and privacy on the Web.
"If this passes, there would be a chilling effect on free speech if everyone knew that everything they did on the Internet could be tracked back to them," Bankston said.
The government has offered differing rationales for its data-retention plan, said Harris, the privacy advocate.
"I've been in discussions at the Department of Justice where someone would say, 'We want this for child protection.' And someone else would say 'national security,' and someone else would say, 'computer crimes,' " Harris said.
Types of records unclear
There are questions about what records would be kept, said David McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association, a Virginia-based group that represents about 800 ISPs.
Is it a log of every Web site a user visits? Is it the actual content of e-mails and other Internet communications? Nobody in the government has offered specifics, he said.
"When we go to them for specifics, they start shuffling and hemming and hawing, and the issue goes away until the attorney general gives another speech," he said.
"This is all being driven by a political need, not a law enforcement need."
Kathleen Blomquist, a Department of Justice spokeswoman, wouldn't comment on specific proposals for tracking.
-
EditorialTwitter Tapping Sign in to Recommend
Published: December 12, 2009
The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era.
Law enforcement is not saying a lot about its social surveillance, but examples keep coming to light. The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of a man suspected of helping coordinate protests at the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh by sending out messages over Twitter.
In some cases, the government appears to be engaged in deception. The Boston Globe recently quoted a Massachusetts district attorney as saying that some police officers were going undercover on Facebook as part of their investigations.
Wired magazine reported last month that In-Q-Tel, an investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, has put money into Visible Technologies, a software company that crawls across blogs, online forums, and open networks like Twitter and YouTube to monitor what is being said.
This month the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law sued the Department of Defense, the C.I.A. and other federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act to learn more about their use of social networking sites.
The suit seeks to uncover what guidelines these agencies have about this activity, including information about whether agents are permitted to use fake identities or to engage in subterfuge, such as tricking people into accepting Facebook friend requests.
Privacy law was largely created in the pre-Internet age, and new rules are needed to keep up with the ways people communicate today. Much of what occurs online, like blog posting, is intended to be an open declaration to the world, and law enforcement is within its rights to read and act on what is written. Other kinds of communication, particularly in a closed network, may come with an expectation of privacy. If government agents are joining social networks under false pretenses to spy without a court order, for example, that might be crossing a line.
A national conversation about social networking and other forms of online privacy is long overdue. The first step toward having it is for the public to know more about what is currently being done. Making the federal government answer these reasonable Freedom of Information Act requests would be a good start.
-
How would being undercover in real life be different than being U/C online?
-
Eric Schmidt on Privacy
Schmidt said:
I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't
want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first
place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is
that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this
information for some time and it's important, for example, that we
are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is
possible that all that information could be made available to the
authorities.
This, from 2006, is my response:
Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're
doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.
We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We
are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private
places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals,
sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret
lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.
[...]
For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under
threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our
own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes,
constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future
-- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us,
by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private
and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything
we do is observable and recordable.
[...]
This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from
us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam
Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive
eye into our personal, private lives.
Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus
privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny,
whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under
constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny.
Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus
privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of
a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even
when we have nothing to hide.
Schmidt's remarks:
http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people
My essay on the value of privacy:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-114.html
See also Daniel Solove's "'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other
Misunderstandings of Privacy."
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
-
Ok, that's a non-answer.
-
Published: December 25, 2009
The Ohio Supreme Court has struck an important blow for privacy rights, ruling that the police need a warrant to search a cellphone. The court rightly recognized that cellphones today are a lot more than just telephones, that they hold a wealth of personal information and that the privacy interest in them is considerable. This was the first such ruling from a state supreme court. It is a model for other courts to follow.
PrivacySearches generally require warrants, but courts have carved out limited categories in which they are not needed. One of these is that police officers are allowed, when they arrest people, to search them and the area immediately surrounding them, as well as some kinds of containers in their possession.
When the police arrested Antwaun Smith on drug charges they seized his cellphone and searched it, examining his call records. The police did not have a warrant or the consent of Mr. Smith.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled this month, by a 4-to-3 vote, that the search violated the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Rather than seeing a cellphone as a simple closed container, the majority noted that modern cellphones — especially ones that permit Internet access — are “capable of storing a wealth of digitized information.”
This is information, the court said, for which people reasonably have a high expectation of privacy, and under established Fourth Amendment principles, police officers must get a search warrant before they can look through call logs or examine other data. The court wisely decided that it made no sense to try to distinguish among various kinds of cellphones based on what specific functions they have. All cellphones, the court said, fall under the search warrant requirement.
Few federal courts have considered the issue of cellphone searches, and they have disagreed about whether a warrant should be required. The Ohio ruling eloquently makes the case for why the very personal information that new forms of technology aggregate must be accorded a significant degree of privacy.
-
Not that I doubt the whiz kids at Fort Meade haven't done it already. . . .
After 21 Years, GSM Encryption is Cracked Putting 3.5B Users at Risk
Jason Mick (Blog) - December 29, 2009 9:04 AM
The cat's out of the bag -- after 28 years the 64-bit A5/1 algorithm that encrypts over 3.5 billion users' cell phone traffic, has been cracked and the results published. (Source: Suldog)
Cell phone industry group calls the research "illegal"; insists that there is little threat
For 21 years, the same encryption algorithm, A5/1, has been employed to protect the privacy of calls under the Global Systems for Mobile communications (GSM) standard. With the GSM standard encompassing 80 percent of calls worldwide (AT&T and T-Mobile use it within the U.S.) -- far more than the leading rival standard CDMA -- this could certainly be considered a pretty good run. However, someone has finally deciphered and published a complete analysis of the standard's encryption techniques in an effort to expose their weaknesses and prompt improvement.
Karsten Nohl, a 28-year-old German native, reportedly cracked the code and has published his findings to the computer and electronics hacking community. Mr. Nohl, who cites a strong interest in protecting the privacy of citizens against snooping from any party, says that his work showcases the outdated algorithms' flaws.
At the Chaos Communication Congress, a four-day conference of computer hackers that runs through Wednesday in Berlin, he revealed his accomplishments. He describes, "This shows that existing GSM security is inadequate. We are trying to push operators to adopt better security measures for mobile phone calls."
The GSM Association, the London-based group that developed the standard and represents wireless companies, was quick to blast the publication calling Mr. Nohl's actions illegal and counterintuitive to the desire to protect the privacy of mobile phone calls. However, they insist that the publication in no way threatens the standard's security.
Claire Cranton, an association spokeswoman, confirmed that Mr. Nohl was the first to break the code, commenting, "[Security threats from the publication of this standard are] theoretically possible but practically unlikely. What he is doing would be illegal in Britain and the United States. To do this while supposedly being concerned about privacy is beyond me."
Mr. Nohl attended college in the U.S. and received a PhD in computer engineering from the University of Virginia. Via a similar publication, he managed to convince the DECT Forum, a separate standards group based in Bern, to upgrade its own security algorithm, improving the protection to the standard's 800 million customers in the process.
And while the trade group is only on yellow alert, some security experts disagree with the group's threat analysis, as well, saying the threat could be far more serious. One expert suggested that calls may soon need to be scanned for malicious activity, much as an antivirus scanner works on a computer.
Stan Schatt, a vice president for health care and security at the technology market researcher ABI Research in New York, opines, "Organizations must now take this threat seriously and assume that within six months their organizations will be at risk unless they have adequate measures in place to secure their mobile phone calls."
The process of cracking the algorithm involved the help of 24 members of the Chaos Computer Club in Berlin, who helped generate the random combinations needed to try and reproduce the standard's code book, so to speak. The vast log of binary combinations forms the basis of the A5/1 encryption -- and how to undo it. And it's now on torrents worldwide.
Despite that, Mr. Nohl insists that his actions aren't illegal. He says he took great precautions to make sure his work was kept purely academic, in the public domain, and that it was not used to crack any actual digital telephone calls. He states, "We are not recommending people use this information to break the law. What we are doing is trying to goad the world’s wireless operators to use better security."
A5/1 is a 64-bit security algorithm. Despite this particular algorithm's run, 64-bit encryption is considered weaker by today's standards. Today 128-bit algorithms are considered to be strong enough to protect most data. The GSM Association has devised a 128-bit successor to A5/1, dubbed A5/3, but it has failed to push the standard out across much of the industry.
The Association claims that there's little danger of calls being intercepted as hackers would have to pick one call stream out of thousands at a cell phone tower. They say that this would take prohibitively expensive sophisticated equipment and software. Security experts disagree with this assessment -- including Mr. Nohl who pointed out that there was a wealth of open source software and cheap equipment to accomplish exactly those sort of objectives.
Simon Bransfield-Garth, the chief executive of Cellcrypt, a company based in London that sells software, agrees, saying that the publications opens call interception to "any reasonable well-funded criminal organization". He adds, "This will reduce the time to break a GSM call from weeks to hours. We expect as this further develops it will be reduced to minutes."
Why is that a big deal? Over 3.5 billion people use GSM worldwide, including 299 million in North America.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=17236
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETrc-ums8_U
-
OMG! The police have aircraft!!!! :-o
-
(http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f105/mudslag/TinFoilHatArea.jpg)
-
GM:
That's very funny , , , and utterly non-responsive to the real issues presented.
With this we will be on the slippery slope to being watched all the time everywhere.
I didn't like this when I read Orwell's 1984, and I don't like it now.
I don't think the Founding Fathers would put up with it ither.
-
NYPD started the first police aviation unit in 1919.
(http://www.houstontx.gov/police/museum/images/fox1.jpg)
The Houston Police Helicopter Division was establish in 1970. The Helicopter Division's first helicopters were model 300c Hughes crafts. The Police Museum has an earlier style police helicopter hanging from the ceiling. The craft is called a "FOX" because of the call numbers on the tail of all HPD Helicopters. All HPD craft markings end with the letter "F." The Military alphabet uses this letter in conjunction with the word Fox. Thus, 53Fox would be the radio call numbers for the craft that now hangs in the museum.
-
Since law enforcement has been using aircraft for close to a century, what's the crisis now?
-
The problem is this:
Due to the acclerating march of technology and its geometrically accelerating decline of its costs, it becomes possible to have an all seeing all recording Big Brother state.
-
Funny, more than a few law enforcement agencies are cutting back/eliminating their aviation programs due to budget cuts. I doubt the unmanned aircraft are anywhere near cheap.
-
SoCal is famous for it's use of police helicopters. Do you feel oppressed?
-
So, police pilot in aircraft, ok, but police pilot not in aircraft, scary orwellian development?
-
More good wit GM, you're on a roll.
Lets see where this leads.
Ultimately, yes.
I reject utterly the notion that if I am doing nothing wrong I have nothing to fear. Maybe I want to pick my nose, or scratch my ass. Maybe I want to have great sex in the middle of a field. Maybe I just want to act in ways I don't want others to see.
If a policeman is sitting on the traffic light, I know he is there. If there is some mini-high-tech camera, I probably don't know I am being watched. From a human and budgetary POV, it is impossible to put a policeman on every traffic light. In contrast t is quite easy to put a camera on every light and every corner. Just look at the UK.
If there is a helicopter with a policeman in it, from a human and budgetary POV, there is a limit to how many helicopters buzzing around there will be. A drone costs a tiny fraction of a helicopter to buy and to operate-- and as a practical matter we the American people, a people who have fought to establish our freedom, will not know whether we are being watched or not.
With this, we enter the landy of the creepy and the Orwellian.
-
Maybe I want to pick my nose, or scratch my ass. Maybe I want to have great sex in the middle of a field. Maybe I just want to act in ways I don't want others to see.
**The fouth requires a reasonable expectation of privacy. Nose picking, ass scratching or sex in a public location has no reasonable expectation of privacy.**
If a policeman is sitting on the traffic light, I know he is there.
**Much of the time traffic enforcement is being done, you don't see the cop that's seeing you. Nothing new there.**
If there is some mini-high-tech camera, I probably don't know I am being watched. From a human and budgetary POV, it is impossible to put a policeman on every traffic light. In contrast t is quite easy to put a camera on every light and every corner. Just look at the UK.
**I like red light cameras, if used in the right way. As far as the UK putting cameras everywhere, I recently read something that said that as far as a tool for reducing crime, it's a flop.**
If there is a helicopter with a policeman in it, from a human and budgetary POV, there is a limit to how many helicopters buzzing around there will be. A drone costs a tiny fraction of a helicopter to buy and to operate-- and as a practical matter we the American people, a people who have fought to establish our freedom, will not know whether we are being watched or not.
With this, we enter the landy of the creepy and the Orwellian.
-
"**The fouth requires a reasonable expectation of privacy. Nose picking, ass scratching or sex in a public location has no reasonable expectation of privacy.**
If no one is in sight, or if I am on private property bounded by a solid fence, I should be able to blissfully pick my nose, scratch my ass, get great fellatio, etc without wondering if some eye in the sky is watching.
-
So, you want to ban all aircraft?
-
Aircraft I can see. No worries-- though when armed with technology that enables high res photos from far away, that too becomes a problem.
Unmanned drones designed to hang out and spy generally undetected, generally I have a big problem.
-
The irony seemingly missed by you, the tv news and the tinfoil hat youtube poster is that the media has helicopters with cameras that allow them to fly and photograph just as police aircraft do. Modern cameras allow closeup still and video to be taken from distances where the helo can't be seen or heard. This could allow for you to be seen getting a Clinton in your back yard.
-
I don't like what I read about the level of surveillance in the UK and I don't want it here.
Anyway, I suspect we will continue to go around the mulberry bush on this one with each having little persuasive effect upon the other and so, for now :lol: will sign off.
-
Trotting a beat in San Francisco
Delfin Vigil
Sunday, October 2, 2005
"I was patrolling down on Ocean Beach when a homeless guy came up to me and the horse and said, 'Man, you horse cops have got like a totally different vibe than the cops down in the Tenderloin,' " remembers Downs, smiling.
"You know, he's probably right. Because in all my years of being in a patrol car, nobody ever came up to me just to say hello. Now it happens every day."
Once SFPD police officers become eligible, they always add their names to the bottom of a long waiting list in hopes of becoming an officer in the country's second-oldest mounted patrol unit, according to Downs.
"Let's just say it was hardly a spur-of-the-moment decision to join," admits the no-pun-intended sergeant, who was on a waiting list for 13 years.
Officially founded in 1872 (two years after New York City's), the mounted patrol unit has been trotting through the city's streets fighting and preventing crime in three centuries. While in its -- ahem -- heyday, there were upward of 30 badge-wearing horses, and although at one point every substation in the city had horses, there are only 13 on-duty patrol ponies left at the department's stables in Golden Gate Park.
There have been attempts to close the unit, including budget-crunching efforts from former Mayor Art Agnos and a proposition put on the 1988 ballot by real estate investor Nicholas Roomel.
"For too long the city of St. Francis has been forced to watch disgusting, undiapered horses annoying the public littering the streets, parks and beaches with excrement," wrote Roomel in his losing argument, which cost $10,000 in campaign funding to defeat.
Although some critics write off the mounted patrol as a chance for police officers to joyride through the park, many don't realize that the horses are putting their lives at risk.
"During crowd control on New Year's Eve, we'll get drunks throwing champagne bottles and other sharp objects right at the horses' faces," says Downs. "We've even had people pick up entire police barricades and throw them at us."
Crowd control is where the horses come in especially handy, because they have the ability to be imposing without being threatening, says Downs.
During one of the initial and largest protests against the current war in Iraq, the mounted patrol unit was brought in to help the first officers on the scene, who were being backed in and surrounded by protesters near Third and Market streets.
"Eleven horses were brought in to save the officers," remembers Downs. "We were able to part the sea of protesters without hitting, stepping on or even touching a single person. That's the beauty of the horse."
All 13 horses on patrol are geldings (neutered males) and include Clydesdale mixes, American quarter horses and Tennessee walkers. Long before they join the force, candidates are spotted for personality traits that would make them good horse police officers. Being calm, curious and affectionate with people is a must. But always following strict orders and going through an intense noise desensitization training is even more important before a horse can take on the noisy and unpredictable streets of San Francisco.
Aggressive dogs are probably the biggest danger to the four-legged officers.
In November 2003, a woman was walking Nettie, a pit bull mix, in Golden Gate Park when she decided to take off the dog's leash to let it play with other dogs. But instead it went after police horse AAA Andy.
AAA, who is not in the insurance business but was given to the department by the company, was bitten several times in the belly and legs by the dog, which continued to chase him for about a half mile as AAA Andy tried to find his way back to the stables. The officer was thrown to the ground during the frenzy. Another officer had to shoot the dog (who survived) to stop the attack.
AAA Andy went on disability for a couple of months. Within weeks of being back on the job he was in the news again for galloping down the "Spider-Man" burglar who had a record of more than 60 acrobatic burglaries through skylights and ventilation shafts in Sunset District buildings. This time, "Spider-Man," a.k.a. 27-year-old Kristian Kwon Marine, was on the run after snatching a purse at a cafe on Ninth Avenue and Irving Street. With only a good old-fashioned "he went thataway," tip, AAA and Officer Kaan Chin chased the burglar down in a field in Golden Gate Park.
"What people don't always understand is that most of what all police officers do involves crime prevention," says Kaan, who still rides AAA Andy. "But these horses are very capable of fighting crime in heat-of-the-moment ways as well. Once that saddle is put on, their personalities change and they are ready to work."
Like all police fraternities, the horses occasionally don't get along and even give each other some grief. No doubt the General, an American quarter horse with seven years on the force, had to put his tail between his legs when his corral compadres heard what happened to him.
"We tied him near Ninth Avenue during a break, and some idiot jumped on and rode him across the street," remembers Downs, a little embarrassed for the General. "That guy was so far gone no psychiatrist would have said he was sane in court," Downs says about the General's rogue rider, as any good cop would to defend a buddy with a wounded ego.
E-mail Delfin Vigil at dvigil@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page PK - 23 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/02/PKG6CEU8GT1.DTL#ixzz0bmrk4b8i
-
Oh yeah, horses are cute. Don't buy into the propaganda, man.
Who had horses? The nazis! Yeah, that's right. Who else has horses? The UK! See the connections? It's all becoming more clear by the moment. First come the horses, then the cops get aircraft, next thing you know, you can't get a filthy sanchez in your backyard without some fascist jackboot clomping by on his "cute and fuzzy" POLICE HORSE!
I know the founding fathers would never tolerate the government having horses.....
-
What's that saying about beating a dead horse?
-
Go ahead and mock the looming threat to privacy and freedom that horses present. Don't say I didn't warn you when they crush the constitution under their steely hooves!
-
Well, we have half of one in the White House right now so you are more right than you realize :lol:
-
Aha! Vindication! :-D
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/11drone.html?pagewanted=all
Military Is Awash in Data From Drones
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: January 10, 2010
HAMPTON, Va. — As the military rushes to place more spy drones over Afghanistan, the remote-controlled planes are producing so much video intelligence that analysts are finding it more and more difficult to keep up.
Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times
Col. Daniel R. Johnson, right, in the intelligence center at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va., where analysts watch every second of drones’ video footage live as it is streamed there.
Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times
Airmen received a pre-mission briefing at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va. They meld information from Predator drones, U-2 spy planes and other sources from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Air Force drones collected nearly three times as much video over Afghanistan and Iraq last year as in 2007 — about 24 years’ worth if watched continuously. That volume is expected to multiply in the coming years as drones are added to the fleet and as some start using multiple cameras to shoot in many directions.
A group of young analysts already watches every second of the footage live as it is streamed to Langley Air Force Base here and to other intelligence centers, and they quickly pass warnings about insurgents and roadside bombs to troops in the field.
But military officials also see much potential in using the archives of video collected by the drones for later analysis, like searching for patterns of insurgent activity over time. To date, only a small fraction of the stored video has been retrieved for such intelligence purposes.
Government agencies are still having trouble making sense of the flood of data they collect for intelligence purposes, a point underscored by the 9/11 Commission and, more recently, by President Obama after the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound passenger flight on Christmas Day.
-
Creditworthy? Lenders delve into your social networks
January 21, 2010 - 6:00am
Lenders are using social graphs to determine how creditworthy you are. (Getty Images)
UNDATED - Your social networking chit-chat could have an impact on your credit - specifically on whether banks think you are worthy of a loan.
Creditors are checking out what you post to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. They're checking out who your friends are and who the people are in your networks.
The presumption is that if your friends are responsible credit cardholders and pay their bills on time, you could be a good credit customer, according to CreditCards.com.
A company called San Francisco-based company Rapleaf monitors what people tweet or post on Facebook and compiles what it calls social graphs of your likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses.
Lenders say having a wide network of friends can expedite getting a loan, while discrepancies between your loan application and your Facebook wall information can raise red flags. Negative comments about your business also can impact your creditworthiness.
Joel Jewitt, vice president of business development of Rapleaf, says creditors aren't accessing the credit reports of your online friends and aren't using the data to find reasons to reject customers.
While lenders say they are using the information for marketing purposes -- to find out what you may like based on what your friends like, the idea of data mining beyond your credit score raises privacy concerns. Some consumer advocates say people may not realize how important their privacy settings are.
You may want to check out the profiles of the folks you friend and delete people you think could potentially damage your credit or employment reputation.
And, of course, you want to remember that what you post is public.
(Copyright 2010 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)
-
From a thread started by our friend Cold War Scout on another forum:
Surveillance Cameras: How Does the Operator Contend With Them?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am posting this article because it is an example of the informal network of video cameras that exists out there in urban areas. It does not matter whether you like surveillance cameras or not, they are out there. Any police department worth its salt has figured out what level of connectivity exists out there which they can use as the basis for trying to determine a suspect's movements to/from a crime scene. Sometimes this allows for determining which vehicle a suspect ultimately got into (e.g. a parking lot) because the "network" only needs to track you to a point where an indentification can be established.
Ergo, when you talk about throw downs and throw aways, or smoking a dirtbag and simply fleeing, keep in mind that you could have the effectiveness of this informal network hanging over your head.
Police capture student's accused rapist
Scott McCabe
Examiner Staff Writer
January 28, 2010
Montgomery County police arrested a man accused of the sexual assault of a 19-year-old student, capping off a five-hour manhunt and the temporary lockdown of Montgomery College's Takoma Park campus. Nathaniel L. Hart, 34, was charged with two counts of first-degree rape, first-degree sexual offense and attempting to escape after arrest. Authorities shut down the campus around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday after a student reported that she had been raped in the bathroom of the performing arts center.Video footage led police to the Days Inn in Silver Spring, where they arrested Hart after officers noticed an open door of a room that hotel management said had been vacant.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/crime/Police-capture-student_s-accused-rapist-82808167.html#ixzz0e0wRBqqb
============
You might be well served right now to try and figure out where cameras are located in the areas you frequent and whether/how it is possible to avoid them (e.g. shopping centers, malls, traffic cameras on the main road outside your house).
There is a reason why talented bandits where layers of clothing. Police are looking for a man with a long sleeve blue flannel shirt, but bandit has pulled that off, thrown it away, and is now down to maybe long sleeve (or short sleeve) gray t-shirt. Same with pants. What started out as gray fleece sweat pants may wind up as blue jeans.
Hoodies and watch caps can be worth their weight in gold. Especially if you have flaming red hair or a Mohawk. Hoodies also seriously cut down the available angles and lighting in photo enhancements.
Is the logo on your jacket or shirt very distinctive or memorable? It might be to witnesses or a camera enhancement as well.
Are you driving a flaming red Hummer (or one of those yellow ones I see so many of)?
Wearing distinctive boots with a distinctive print? Running across a muddy field to your car?
So what thoughts come to YOUR mind as/if you need to successfully urban E and E?
===========
We put in a lot of these systems.
The factors that affect their usefulness for both actionable and forensic intel are:
1. Are the systems properly monitored?
2. Are they maintained?
3. Are they cohesive systems - ie all on one media server?
4. Do they store the video? Many places just store one day or not at all.
5. Do they have active detection software running? ( ie looks for a stopped car?)
Most university campuses have one system and its easy to put all cameras of interest on one pane of glass and then roll forward from a point in time. Universities are pretty good at 1-4. If they have a Dispatch/Security team looking at the systems actively, then they can respond pretty quick.
Many government agencies from airports to towns are not very good at 1-4. If they do 1-4 internally, then the chance is greater that the system is subpar - if they contract out the work of 1-4 then there is a greater chance its pretty good.
You could always slop some material on a camera and then come back a week later to see if they have cleaned it. If not, then the system is probably not a good one.
Public transit is the worst environment for tracking people. Most systems are not integrated because they are so big and there are too many people and they then dissappear into the urban environment.
Many urban roads have an ITS ( Intelligent Transportation System) running which has #5 - that detects stalled vehicles and some types of debris. Some will detect people on the road, too. Some campuses and other installations will detect movement as well.
If you had to do something specific, then you can create blind spots a few days before by disabling the systems in a random matter to reduce focus on your area of interest. You can use lasers or high power LED lights to disable the cameras in real time but would need to test this before hand on models under your control. Some cameras are wireless and you can jam their signals. Others will PTZ ( Pan-Tilt-Zoom) on movement.
These systems are not the all-seeing eyes.
=================
-
An interesting analysis of the current state of affairs. Of course there is also the question of where things are headed , , ,
=============
What I believe that ___ is talking about here is NOT that someone can do a "Criminal Minds" style trace you across three continents using video footage hacked from random sources after identifying you by comparing a single grainy image against every drivers license database. That can't be done *yet*, and we're quite a ways from it.
What *can* happen is that some incident comes to the police's attention in front of the Licquor Store on State St. and Broadway. They know that the parking garage across the street has video cameras for liability. It shows the event and some amorphous blob about 5'6-6 foot walking away (and yes, knowing the height and angle of the camera, the distance to the event, and the height of one or more objects in the for and background they can, depending on image clarity get a LOT closer than that). This doesn't help them much, but they know there is another parking garage 1/2 block west, and licquor store with a couple of cameras in the parking lot 1/2 block east.
They also know the time, and approximately how long it takes to walk that far. So they don't have to scan a lot of video, maybe 10 minutes (more if the clocks are significantly off). If they see Mr. Blob on one video they move to the next camera that direction, establishing a route and asking questions along the way.
Given the proliferation (due to Moore's Law if nothing else) of video cameras all they have to do is stroll possible routes with an eye for video cameras. I'm betting you'll find them over watching alleys (to watch for employee pilferage and for employee security), loading docks etc. as well as front doors.
And on NONE of these are they really all that concerned with getting a good picture of your face. If they do, bonus. As long as they can track you, that's good enough. Eventually they'll find something, a store you ducked in to to buy a soda, or a car with a license plate or *something*.
Even in residential neighborhoods people are starting to monitor their houses and the streets ( http://www.safemart.com/category-Sec...meras-6835.htm ) and sometimes the cops know about it. Since these folks are buying consumer grade stuff it's *better* video than what the stores are putting in, but has a shorter lifespan, so it gets replaced every 3-4 year with BETTER stuff. And when they hear that the police are looking for any information on who killed Officer Joe Hero with three kids and who fled down Broadway in a blue car, they pull up their video and there you are. And their neighbor, who also has a system has a different angle and knows a guy on the next block...
You're also going to have about 1/2 the people filming/taking your picture on their cellphone.
And then they show these to a sketch artist.
And when they *catch* you, unless you're either well practiced, or a sociopath, if they have enough evidence to question you, they will find *some* handle to question you further.
Note that none of this has anything to do with actually seeing your picture on video.
Some of the tricks mentioned might work, but if they catch you slipping off that nasty overcoat and slipping on a tie, then they'd just change the blob they're looking for. And if they DO find some way to prove that blob was you, they just proved intent--otherwise you'd not have prepared a disguise ahead of time.
If something happens that you didn't expect and you need to flee the law you'd best just keep running until you're in a jurisdiction that doesn't have and extradition treaty, hope that the event is below the police's radar, or is sufficiently political that you can flee somewhere and ask for political asylum.
Seriously, if you act in accordance with the law, and act, to the extent the law allows, in a moral manner then either your best bet is to stay on scene and act like you did the right thing, or if the local gendarmes are corrupt to the point where that's not possible, then you're back to fleeing the jurisdiction. The only possible alternative is to get to your lawyers and arrange to turn yourself in to a different LEA, as an example if you had to shoot a dirty cop, you turn yourself in to the FBI, or if you had to shoot a sheriff who was doing Bad Things then go to the city police.
-
Retroactive Surveillance Immunity, Obama Style
Posted by Julian Sanchez
There’s a lot to unpack in the Office of the Inspector General’s blistering 300-page report on illegal FBI abuse of surveillance authority issued last month, but I want to highlight one especially worrisome aspect, about which I spoke with The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder earlier today.
The very short version of the report’s background finding is that, for several years, analysts at the FBI blithely and illegally circumvented even the minimal checks on their power to demand telephone records under the PATRIOT Act. I’ll go into this further in a future post, but there are strong indicators that the agents involved knew they were doing something shady. Thousands of records were obtained using a basically made-up process called an “exigent letter” wherein they ask for records with what amounts to an IOU promising legitimate legal process any day now. (In many of those cases, the legitimate legal process would not actually have been available for the records obtained.) Still more disturbing, an unknown number of records were obtained without even this fictitious process: Agents simply made informal requests verbally, by e-mail, or via post-it note. And hey, why bother with subponeas or National Security Letters when you can just slap a sticky on someone’s monitor?
Treated to a preview of the OIG’s damning conclusions, the FBI was eager to find some way to cover its massive lawbreaking. So they apparently crafted a novel legal theory after the fact, in hopes of finding some way to shoehorn their actions into federal privacy statutes. On January 8—as in four weeks ago, years after the conduct occurred—the Office of Legal Counsel seems to have blessed the FBI’s theory, which unfortunately remains secret. Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold, Dick Durbin, and Ron Wyden have asked the Justice Department for details, but at present we just don’t know what kind of loopholes DOJ believes exist in the law meant to protect our sensitive calling records.
Communications records are generally protected by Chapter 121 of Title 18, known to its buddies as the Stored Communications Act. The few snippets of unredacted material in the OIG report suggest that the FBI’s argument is that the statute does not apply to certain classes of call records. Presumably, the place to look for the loophole is in §2702, which governs voluntary disclosures by telecom firms. There is, of course, an exemption for genuine emergencies—imminent threats to life and limb—but these, we know, are not at issue here because most of the records were not sought in emergency situations. But there are a number of other loopholes. The statute governs companies providing electronic communications services “to the public”—which encompasses your cell company and your ISP, but probably not the internal networks of your university or employer. The activity at issue here, however, involved the major telecom carriers, so that’s probably not it. There’s another carve-out for records obtained with the consent of the subscriber, which might cover certain government employees who’ve signed off on surveillance as a condition of employment. We do know that in some cases, the records obtained had to do with leak investigations, but that doesn’t seem especially likely either, since the FBI claims (though the OIG expresses its doubts about the veracity of the claim) that the justification would apply to the “majority” of records obtained.
My current best guess, based on what little we know, is this. The SCA refers to, and protects from disclosure to any “government entity,” the records of “customers” and “subscribers.” But telecommunications firms may often have records about the calling activity of people who are not the customers or subscribers of that company. For example, reciprocal agreements between carriers will often permit a phone that’s signed up with one cell provider to make use of another company’s network while roaming. When these outside phones register on a network, that information goes to a database called the Visitor Location Register. You could imagine a clever John Yoo type arguing that the SCA does not cover information in the VLR, since it does not constitute a “subscriber” or “customer” record. Of course, it beggars belief to think that Congress intended to allow such a loophole—or, indeed, had even considered such technical details of cell network architecture.
My guess, to be sure, could be wrong. But that just points to the larger problem: The Justice Department believes that some very clever lawyerly reading of the privacy statutes—so very clever that despite the rampant “creativity” of the Bush years, they only just came up with it a few weeks ago—permits the FBI to entirely circumvent all the elaborate systems of checks and balances in place (or so we thought) to protect our calling records. If investigators can write themselves secret exemptions from the clear intent of the law, then all the ongoing discussion about reform and reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act amounts to a farcical debate about where to place the fortifications along the Maginot Line.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/02/01/retroactive-surveillance-immunity-obama-style/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cato-at-liberty+%28Cato+at+Liberty%29
-
This is the same arrogant crap the cops pulled in Texas. Is there a pattern emerging?
-
BBG:
I hope you will be able to stay on top of this story for us as it develops.
Thank you.
-
I'll try to wade through the report at some point, and will certainly keep track of what's being reported in the Libertarian world. Surprises me that the MSM has so little to say about it.
-
the MSM is like the sheep in animal farm, they are so coopted that they do not even realize what they are doing........
The wired article titled "Privacy? it is gone, get over it and move on." pretty much describes the attitude of most. Especially the post X generations.
-
FBI wants to know where you've been on the web
Rick Moran
I guess it had to happen eventually. The FBI wants the authority to order internet service providers to keep customer surfing records for up to two years.
It's "for the children" of course. They say it will be easier to find and track child porn users. Never mind that your surfing history will also tell the feds whether you're a Republican or Democrat, or who your friends are, or what you really think about Obama.
Declan McCullagh of CNET has the details:
As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.
The FBI is not alone in renewing its push for data retention. As CNET reported earlier this week, a survey of state computer crime investigators found them to be nearly unanimous in supporting the idea. Matt Dunn, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the Department of Homeland Security, also expressed support for the idea during the task force meeting.
Greg Motta, the chief of the FBI's digital evidence section, said that the bureau was trying to preserve its existing ability to conduct criminal investigations. Federal regulations in place since at least 1986 require phone companies that offer toll service to "retain for a period of 18 months" records including "the name, address, and telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time and length of the call."
At Thursday's meeting (PDF) of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, which was created by Congress and organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Motta stressed that the bureau was not asking that content data, such as the text of e-mail messages, be retained.
By all means, give the FBI everything they need - within reason - to conduct criminal investigations. But tracking an individual's website history is pretty far over the line. Anytime the potential for abuse outweighs any possible gains, such an idea should be deep sixed.
Over the next decade, we will have to fight very hard to keep the internet from falling into the hands of statists who would use it to oppress us. The UN will try to take it over. The US government will try to tax it, and perhaps even level a charge for email. Other nations like China will continue to restrict freedom on the net.
All must be resisted if this last, true bastion of unfettered personal liberty and expression is to remain in the hands of the people.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/02/fbi_wants_to_know_where_youve.html at February 06, 2010 - 04:53:50 PM CST
-
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10451518-38.html
Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.
FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12 heists, and that those phones belonged to men named Tony Hewitt and Corey Duffey. A jury eventually convicted the duo of multiple bank robbery and weapons charges.
Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.
In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.
Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department's request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans' privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.
"This is a critical question for privacy in the 21st century," says Kevin Bankston, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing on Friday. "If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the Fourth Amendment."
Not long ago, the concept of tracking cell phones would have been the stuff of spy movies. In 1998's "Enemy of the State," Gene Hackman warned that the National Security Agency has "been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the '40s--they've infected everything." After a decade of appearances in "24" and "Live Free or Die Hard," location-tracking has become such a trope that it was satirized in a scene with Seth Rogen from "Pineapple Express" (2008).
Once a Hollywood plot, now 'commonplace'
Whether state and federal police have been paying attention to Hollywood, or whether it was the other way around, cell phone tracking has become a regular feature in criminal investigations. It comes in two forms: police obtaining retrospective data kept by mobile providers for their own billing purposes that may not be very detailed, or prospective data that reveals the minute-by-minute location of a handset or mobile device.
Obtaining location details is now "commonplace," says Al Gidari, a partner in the Seattle offices of Perkins Coie who represents wireless carriers. "It's in every pen register order these days."
Gidari says that the Third Circuit case could have a significant impact on police investigations within the court's jurisdiction, namely Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; it could be persuasive beyond those states. But, he cautions, "if the privacy groups win, the case won't be over. It will certainly be appealed."
CNET was the first to report on prospective tracking in a 2005 news article. In a subsequent Arizona case, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration tracked a tractor trailer with a drug shipment through a GPS-equipped Nextel phone owned by the suspect. Texas DEA agents have used cell site information in real time to locate a Chrysler 300M driving from Rio Grande City to a ranch about 50 miles away. Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile logs showing the location of mobile phones at the time calls became evidence in a Los Angeles murder trial.
And a mobile phone's fleeting connection with a remote cell tower operated by Edge Wireless is what led searchers to the family of the late James Kim, a CNET employee who died in the Oregon wilderness in 2006 after leaving a snowbound car to seek help.
"This is a critical question for privacy in the 21st century. If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the Fourth Amendment."
--Kevin Bankston, attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
The way tracking works is simple: mobile phones are miniature radio transmitters and receivers. A cellular tower knows the general direction of a mobile phone (many cell sites have three antennas pointing in different directions), and if the phone is talking to multiple towers, triangulation yields a rough location fix. With this method, accuracy depends in part on the density of cell sites.
The Federal Communications Commission's "Enhanced 911" (E911) requirements allowed rough estimates to be transformed into precise coordinates. Wireless carriers using CDMA networks, such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, tend to use embedded GPS technology to fulfill E911 requirements. AT&T and T-Mobile comply with E911 regulations using network-based technology that computes a phone's location using signal analysis and triangulation between towers.
T-Mobile, for instance, uses a GSM technology called Uplink Time Difference of Arrival, or U-TDOA, which calculates a position based on precisely how long it takes signals to reach towers. A company called TruePosition, which provides U-TDOA services to T-Mobile, boasts of "accuracy to under 50 meters" that's available "for start-of-call, midcall, or when idle."
A 2008 court order to T-Mobile in a criminal investigation of a marriage fraud scheme, which was originally sealed and later made public, says: "T-Mobile shall disclose at such intervals and times as directed by (the Department of Homeland Security), latitude and longitude data that establishes the approximate positions of the Subject Wireless Telephone, by unobtrusively initiating a signal on its network that will enable it to determine the locations of the Subject Wireless Telephone."
'No reasonable expectation of privacy'
In the case that's before the Third Circuit on Friday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, said it needed historical (meaning stored, not future) phone location information because a set of suspects "use their wireless telephones to arrange meetings and transactions in furtherance of their drug trafficking activities."
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Lenihan in Pennsylvania denied the Justice Department's attempt to obtain stored location data without a search warrant; prosecutors had invoked a different legal procedure. Lenihan's ruling, in effect, would require police to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause--a more privacy-protective standard.
Lenihan's opinion (PDF)--which, in an unusual show of solidarity, was signed by four other magistrate judges--noted that location information can reveal sensitive information such as health treatments, financial difficulties, marital counseling, and extra-marital affairs.
In its appeal to the Third Circuit, the Justice Department claims that Lenihan's opinion "contains, and relies upon, numerous errors" and should be overruled. In addition to a search warrant not being necessary, prosecutors said, because location "records provide only a very general indication of a user's whereabouts at certain times in the past, the requested cell-site records do not implicate a Fourth Amendment privacy interest."
The Obama administration is not alone in making this argument. U.S. District Judge William Pauley, a Clinton appointee in New York, wrote in a 2009 opinion that a defendant in a drug trafficking case, Jose Navas, "did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the cell phone" location. That's because Navas only used the cell phone "on public thoroughfares en route from California to New York" and "if Navas intended to keep the cell phone's location private, he simply could have turned it off."
(Most cases have involved the ground rules for tracking cell phone users prospectively, and judges have disagreed over what legal rules apply. Only a minority has sided with the Justice Department, however.)
Cellular providers tend not to retain moment-by-moment logs of when each mobile device contacts the tower, in part because there's no business reason to store the data, and in part because the storage costs would be prohibitive. They do, however, keep records of what tower is in use when a call is initiated or answered--and those records are generally stored for six months to a year, depending on the company.
Verizon Wireless keeps "phone records including cell site location for 12 months," Drew Arena, Verizon's vice president and associate general counsel for law enforcement compliance, said at a federal task force meeting in Washington, D.C. last week. Arena said the company keeps "phone bills without cell site location for seven years," and stores SMS text messages for only a very brief time.
Gidari, the Seattle attorney, said that wireless carriers have recently extended how long they store this information. "Prior to a year or two ago when location-based services became more common, if it were 30 days it would be surprising," he said.
The ACLU, EFF, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and University of San Francisco law professor Susan Freiwald argue that the wording of the federal privacy law in question allows judges to require the level of proof required for a search warrant "before authorizing the disclosure of particularly novel or invasive types of information." In addition, they say, Americans do not "knowingly expose their location information and thereby surrender Fourth Amendment protection whenever they turn on or use their cell phones."
"The biggest issue at stake is whether or not courts are going to accept the government's minimal view of what is protected by the Fourth Amendment," says EFF's Bankston. "The government is arguing that based on precedents from the 1970s, any record held by a third party about us, no matter how invasively collected, is not protected by the Fourth Amendment."
Update 10:37 a.m. PT: A source inside the U.S. Attorney's Office for the northern district of Texas, which prosecuted the Scarecrow Bandits mentioned in the above article, tells me that this was the first and the only time that the FBI has used the location-data-mining technique to nab bank robbers. It's also worth noting that the leader of this gang, Corey Duffey, was sentenced last month to 354 years (not months, but years) in prison. Another member is facing 140 years in prison.
Declan McCullagh is a contributor to CNET News and a correspondent for CBSNews.com who has covered the intersection of politics and technology for over a decade. Declan writes a regular feature called Taking Liberties, focused on individual and economic rights; you can bookmark his CBS News Taking Liberties site, or subscribe to the RSS feed. You can e-mail Declan at declan@cbsnews.com.
-
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6412572n
-
Phone companies know where their customers' cellphones are, often within a radius of less than 100 feet. That tracking technology has rescued lost drivers, helped authorities find kidnap victims and let parents keep tabs on their kids.
But the technology isn't always used the way the phone company intends.
One morning last summer, Glenn Helwig threw his then-wife to the floor of their bedroom in Corpus Christi, Texas, she alleged in police reports. She packed her 1995 Hyundai and drove to a friend's home, she recalled recently. She didn't expect him to find her. The day after she arrived, she says, her husband "all of a sudden showed up." According to police reports, he barged in and knocked her to the floor, then took off with her car.
The police say in a report that Mr. Helwig found his wife using a service offered by his cellular carrier, which enabled him to follow her movements through the global-positioning-system chip contained in her cellphone.
Mr. Helwig, in an interview, acknowledged using the service to track his wife on some occasions. He says he signed up for the tracking service last year. "AT&T had this little deal where you could find your family member through her cellphone," he says. But he didn't use it to find his wife that day, he says. Mr. Helwig, who is awaiting trial on related assault charges, declined to comment further about the matter. He has pleaded not guilty.
The allegations are a stark reminder of a largely hidden cost from the proliferation of sophisticated tracking technology in everyday life—a loss of privacy.
Global-positioning systems, called GPS, and other technologies used by phone companies have unexpectedly made it easier for abusers to track their victims. A U.S. Justice Department report last year estimated that more than 25,000 adults in the U.S. are victims of GPS stalking annually, including by cellphone.
In the online world, consumers who surf the Internet unintentionally surrender all kinds of personal information to marketing firms that use invisible tracking technology to monitor online activity. A Wall Street Journal investigation of the 50 most-popular U.S. websites found that most are placing intrusive tracking technologies on the computers of visitors—in some cases, more than 100 tracking tools at a time.
The cellphone industry says location-tracking programs are meant to provide a useful service to families, and that most providers take steps to prevent abuse. Mike Altschul, chief counsel for wireless-telecommunications trade group CTIA, says recommended "best practices" for providers of such services include providing notification to the person being tracked.
Mr. Helwig's wife had received such a notification, by text message, from AT&T. A spokesman for AT&T Inc. says it notifies all phone users when tracking functions are activated. But users don't have the right to refuse to be tracked by the account holder. Turning off the phone stops the tracking.
Cellphone companies will deactivate a tracking function if law-enforcement officials inform them it is being used for stalking. Mr. Altschul says authorities haven't asked carriers to change their programs. He adds that carriers have long supported programs to give untraceable cellphones to domestic-violence victims.
In Arizona this year, Andre Leteve used the GPS in his wife's cellphone to stalk her, according to his wife's lawyer, Robert Jensen, before allegedly murdering their two children and shooting himself. Mr. Jensen says Mr. Leteve's wife, Laurie Leteve, didn't know she was being tracked until she looked at one of the family's monthly cellphone bills, more than 30 days after the tracking began. Mr. Leteve, a real-estate agent, is expected to recover. He has pleaded not guilty to murder charges, and is awaiting trial. The law firm representing him declined to comment.
In a suspected murder-suicide last year near Seattle, a mechanic named James Harrison allegedly tracked his wife's cellphone to a store. After he found her there with another man, he shot to death his five children and himself, according to the Pierce County Sheriff's Office.
Therapists who work with domestic-abuse victims say they are increasingly seeing clients who have been stalked via their phones. At the Next Door Solutions for Battered Women shelter in San Jose, Calif., director Kathleen Krenek says women frequently arrive with the same complaint: "He knows where I am all the time, and I can't figure out how he's tracking me."
In such cases, Ms. Krenek says, the abuser is usually tracking a victim's cellphone. That comes as a shock to many stalking victims, she says, who often believe that carrying a phone makes them safer because they can call 911 if they're attacked.
There are various technologies for tracking a person's phone, and with the fast growth in smartphones, new ones come along frequently. Earlier this year, researchers with iSec Partners, a cyber-security firm, described in a report how anyone could track a phone within a tight radius. All that is required is the target person's cellphone number, a computer and some knowledge of how cellular networks work, said the report, which aimed to spotlight a security vulnerability.
The result, says iSec researcher Don Bailey, is that "guys like me, who shouldn't have access to your location, have it for very, very, very cheap."
That is, in part, an unintended consequence of federal regulations that require cellphone makers to install GPS chips or other location technology in nearly all phones. The Federal Communications Commission required U.S. cellular providers to make at least 95% of the phones in their networks traceable by satellite or other technologies by the end of 2005. The agency's intention was to make it easier for people in emergencies to get help. GPS chips send signals to satellites that enable police and rescue workers to locate a person.
To a large extent, that potential has been fulfilled. Last year, for example, police in Athol, Mass., working with a cellphone carrier, were able to pinpoint the location of a 9-year-old girl who allegedly had been kidnapped and taken to Virginia by her grandmother. In December, police in Wickliffe, Ohio, tracked down and arrested a man who allegedly had robbed a Pizza Hut at gunpoint by tracking the location of a cellphone they say he had stolen.
Mr. Altschul, of the cellphone-industry trade group, says the tracking technology has been of great help to both law-enforcement officials and parents. "The technology here is neutral," he says. "It's actually used for peace of mind."
But as GPS phones proliferated, tech companies found other uses for the tracking data. Software called MobileSpy can "silently record text messages, GPS locations and call details" on iPhones, BlackBerrys and Android phones, according to the program's maker, Retina-X Studios LLC. For $99.97 a year, a person can load MobileSpy onto someone's cellphone and track that phone's location.
Craig Thompson, Retina-X's operations director, says the software is meant to allow parents to track their kids and companies to keep tabs on phones their employees use. He says the company has sold 60,000 copies of MobileSpy. The company sometimes gets calls from people who complain they are being improperly tracked, he says, but it hasn't been able to verify any of the complaints.
Installing such programs requires a person to physically get hold of the phone to download software onto it.
GPS-tracking systems provided by cellular carriers such as AT&T and Verizon Communications Inc. are activated remotely, by the carriers.
Domestic-violence shelters have learned the consequences. As soon as victims arrive at shelters run by A Safe Place, "we literally take their phones apart and put them in a plastic bag" to disable the tracking systems, says Marsie Silvestro, director of the Portsmouth, N.H., organization, which houses domestic-violence victims in secret locations so their abusers can't find them.
The organization put that policy in place after a close call. On Feb. 26, Jennie Barnes arrived at a shelter to escape her husband, Michael Barnes, according to a police affidavit filed in a domestic-violence case against Mr. Barnes in New Hampshire state court. Ms. Barnes told police she was afraid that Mr. Barnes, who has admitted in court to assaulting his wife, would assault her again.
Ms. Barnes told a police officer that "she was in fear for her life," according to court filings. The next day, a judge issued a restraining order requiring Mr. Barnes to stay away from his wife.
Later that day, court records indicate, Mr. Barnes called his wife's cellular carrier, AT&T, and activated a service that let him track his wife's location. Mr. Barnes, court records say, told his brother that he planned to find Ms. Barnes.
The cellular carrier sent Ms. Barnes a text message telling her the tracking service had been activated, and police intercepted her husband. Mr. Barnes, who pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife and to violating a restraining order by tracking her with the cellphone, was sentenced to 12 months in jail. A lawyer for Mr. Barnes didn't return calls seeking comment.
Another source for cellphone tracking information: systems meant to help police and firefighters. Some cellular carriers provide services for law-enforcement officers to track people in emergencies. Using such systems requires a person to visit a special website or dial a hot-line number set up by the carrier and claim the data request is for law-enforcement purposes.
Cellular carriers say they try to verify that callers are legitimate. An AT&T spokesman says an office is manned around the clock by operators who ask for subpoenas from law-enforcement officials using the system.
But federal law allows carriers to turn over data in emergencies without subpoenas. Al Gidari, a lawyer who represents carriers such as Verizon, says such location-tracking systems can be easy to abuse. Police, he says, often claim they need data immediately for an emergency like a kidnapping, and therefore don't have time to obtain a warrant, in which a judge must approve an information request.
In Minnesota, Sarah Jean Mann claimed last year in a county-court petition for a restraining order that her estranged boyfriend, a state narcotics agent, followed her by tracking her cellphone and accessing her call and location records through such a system. The court issued the restraining order. The boyfriend, Randy Olson, has since resigned from the police force. He didn't respond to calls seeking comment.
Mr. Gidari says law-enforcement's easy access to such data makes the systems easy to abuse. He says carriers would like to have a system in place requiring agents to get warrants. Without such a requirement, there is little carriers can do to resist warrantless requests, say Mr. Gidari and Mr. Altschul of trade group CTIA. Federal law says carriers may comply with such requests, and law-enforcement agencies have pressured them to maintain the tracking systems, Mr. Gidari says.
The easiest way for stalkers to locate a target—and perhaps the most common, say therapists who work with victims and abusers—is by using systems offered by carriers. When cellphone users sign up for a "family plan" that includes two or more phones, they have the option to contact the carrier and activate a tracking feature intended to allow them to keep tabs on their children.
The AT&T FamilyMap program, for example, is free for 30 days and requires only a phone call to activate. "Know where your kids and loved ones are at any time!" says AT&T's website. The system is for parents, says an AT&T spokesman. He says the company hasn't received complaints about FamilyMap being used by stalkers.
The system provides an on-screen map on the smartphone or computer of the person doing the tracking. A dot on the map shows the location and movement of the person being followed. The carrier sends a text-message to the person being tracked that their phone is registered in the program.
These add-on services can be lucrative for carriers. AT&T debuted its FamilyMap system in April 2009. It charges $9.99 a month to track up to two phones, $14.99 for up to five. FamilyMap users must agree to "terms-of-use" stating that they may not use the system to "harrass, stalk, threaten" or otherwise harm anyone.
In Corpus Christi, Mr. Helwig and his wife, who had been married since early 2008, bought phones under an AT&T family plan. Mr. Helwig says he activated the feature last year. His wife says she received a text message that a tracking function had been activated on her phone, but wasn't sure how it was activated. Her husband, she says, initially denied turning on the tracking function.
She says she eventually came up with a plan to flee to the house of a family whose children she baby-sat. Her husband "had no idea where they lived" or even their names, she says. As she was packing, her husband confronted her. They argued, and, according to her statements in police reports, Mr. Helwig dragged her around by her hair.
The police came. She says she told them she didn't want them to arrest Mr. Helwig, that she simply wanted to leave. The police told Mr. Helwig to stay away from her for 24 hours, she says.
As she drove to her friend's house, she says, she made sure her phone was off so Mr. Helwig couldn't track her. But she turned it on several times to make calls. The next day, Mr. Helwig was outside in a rage, according to police reports.
Mr. Helwig forced his way into the house, pushed her to the floor, took her car keys and drove away in her Hyundai, according to police reports.
Police arrested Mr. Helwig a short distance away. Mr. Helwig, a firefighter, is facing charges of assault and interfering with an emergency call. His trial is scheduled to begin this summer.
Mr. Helwig and his wife divorced, and she left Corpus Christi. She says she doesn't want to testify against him. She says she is more careful about trusting her cellphone now.
Write to Justin Scheck at justin.scheck@wsj.com
-
Hacker intercepts phone calls with homebuilt $1,500 IMSI catcher, claims GSM is beyond repair
By Sean Hollister posted Jul 31st 2010 10:28PM
In 2009, Chris Paget showed the world the vulnerabilities of RFID by downloading the contents of US passports from the safety of his automobile. This year, he's doing the same for mobile phones. Demonstrating at DefCon 2010, the white hat hacker fooled 17 nearby GSM phones into believing his $1,500 kit (including a laptop and two RF antennas) was a legitimate cell phone base station, and proceeded to intercept and record audience calls. "As far as your cell phones are concerned, I'm now indistinguishable from AT&T," he told the crowd. The purpose of the demonstration was highlight a major flaw in the 2G GSM system, which directs phones to connect to the tower with the strongest signal regardless of origin -- in this case, Paget's phony tower.
The hacker did caveat that his system could only intercept outbound calls, and that caller ID could tip off the owner of a handset to what's what, but he says professional IMSI catchers used by law enforcement don't suffer from such flaws and amateur parity would only be a matter of time. "GSM is broken," Paget said, "The primary solution is to turn it off altogether." That's a tall order for a world still very dependent on the technology for mobile connectivity, but we suppose AT&T and T-Mobile could show the way. Then again, we imagine much of that same world is still using WEP and WPA1 to "secure" their WiFi.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/31/hacker-intercepts-phone-calls-with-homebuilt-1-500-imsi-catcher/
-
Interesting.
Trivia: George Gilder called this over ten years ago back when he was evangelizing for Qualcom's technology.
-
Prepare for Data Tsunami, Warns Google CEO
Google CEO Eric Schmidt says an explosion of data is coming -- and we're totally unprepared to handle the deluge. Here's why he's right.
Dan Tynan, ITworld
Aug 6, 2010 5:09 pm
Google CEO Eric Schmidt had some scary things to say about privacy yesterday. In a nutshell, he said there's an almost incomprehensible amount of data out there about all of us -- much of which we've generated ourselves via social networks, blogs, and so on -- and we are totally unprepared to deal with the implications of that fact.
Schmidt was speaking at the Techonomy confab, currently underway at California's Lake Tahoe, where large-brained people gather to talk about how technology and the economy intersect.
[ See also: Whom do you fear: Apple, Google, Microsoft, or God? ]
Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web distilled the highlights:
"There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003," Schmidt said, "but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing...People aren't ready for the technology revolution that's going to happen to them...."
"If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence," Schmidt said, "we can predict where you are going to go."
"Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos! People will find it's very useful to have devices that remember what you want to do, because you forgot...But society isn't ready for questions that will be raised as result of user-generated content."
Are visions of 2001's HAL 9000 or maybe The Terminator's SkyNet dancing in your head yet? How about Minority Report or Enemy of the State?
In those movies, it was malevolent machines or government agencies that played the boogieman. In Schmidt's scenario, the source of evil is a lot murkier.
Schmidt wasn't really trying to draw disaster scenarios. He noted that a lot of positive benefits can come from the information explosion, and he's right. Personally, if not for the Internet, I might be in another line of work. I'd almost certainly live in another city. Being able to access vast amounts of data without lifting my butt from this ergonomic chair has transformed my life in dozens of ways, as I'm sure it has tranformed others'.
Of course, Google is in the business of monetizing that data, for which it seems to possess an insatiable appetite. And sometimes it screws up big time. Schmidt didn't really talk about that.
The good side of all this data: instant information about virtually anything. The dark side? Vast potential for personal profiling by your employer, your insurer, and The Man.
The fact is, your participation in a political forum might cause someone to not hire you. Your comments to a blog post about a particular medical condition may inspire an insurer to decline coverage. The Web sites you visit, the books you download and the movies you stream could get you on a watchlist -- or worse.
Sound like a paranoid fantasy? It's happened before, in different places and times, in different ways. From now on, though, it will happen via the Net. The stunning profusion of data out there -- and Google's very efficient methods for collecting and organizing that data -- make it all possible.
Schmidt seems like a decent enough guy (though the resemblance to Howdy Doody is a bit unnerving). I don't think he or his company are evil; but I do believe that like most corporations -- and people, for that matter -- Google has its own best interests at heart. Those interests lie in keeping Schmidt's search engine stoked with more and more data.
He's right, though. We're unprepared. And when the data tsunami hits, all of us will get soaked. Hope you brought your all-weather gear.
When not abusing weather metaphors, ITworld TY4NS blogger Dan Tynan keeps the snark engine stoked at eSarcasm (Geek Humor Gone Wild). Follow him on Twitter: @tynan_on_tech.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/202817/prepare_for_data_tsunami_warns_google_ceo.html?tk=hp_new
-
There aren't 14 photos of me on the internet....
-
I'm sure there's a wisecrack that could spring from that statement.
Hey I've been meaning to mention my shooting instructor ran your pal Radley Balko through a concealed carry for self defense class a couple months back. Said he'd done "okay," which I took to mean another freaking civie who needs a lot more range time.
-
Yes, I keep my face off the net to avoid mass waves of gastric reflux.
I wish Ol' Radley would pin on a badge for a while to see that things aren't as simple as he thinks. Until then, he's just a virgin discussing the kama sutra.
-
Wished I'd been there to get a read on Balko. I figured out what my Obama tax break amounts to, pay it monthly to the instructor, and then jump in on any class where there's space available. Would have been amusing to see what Balko's about.
-
Google CEO Schmidt: No Anonymity Is The Future Of Web
By Ms. Smith
Created Aug 9 2010 - 9:21pm
[1]No anonymity is the future of web in the opinion of Google's CEO Eric Schmidt. He said many creepy things about privacy at the Techonomy Conference. [2] The focus of the conference was how technology is changing and can change society. Schmidt's message was that anonymity is a dangerous thing and governments will demand an end to it.
In an video interview [3] with Julia Boorstin, CNBC Correspondent, Schmidt stated (starting at 5:13):
"Privacy is incredibly important," Schmidt stated. "Privacy is not the same thing as anonymity. It's very important that Google and everyone else respects people's privacy. People have a right to privacy; it's natural; it's normal. It's the right way to do things. But if you are trying to commit a terrible, evil crime, it's not obvious that you should be able to do so with complete anonymity. There are no systems in our society which allow you to do that. Judges insist on unmasking who the perpetrator was. So absolute anonymity could lead to some very difficult decisions for our governments and our society as a whole."
Whether it was a Freudian slip or a simple misstatement, Schmidt is correct; it is not obvious that if you are anonymous, you are therefore likely to commit a "terrible, evil crime."
Anonymity equaling a future heinous act seems to be the direction some online security experts are headed. The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace [4] proposes to do away with anonymous multiple identities in favor of one real identity. Part of the reasoning behind one trusted identity is to do away with crime. But isn't this the same logic of anonymity breeding anti-social behavior and criminals?
According to ReadWriteWeb [5], Schmidt said of anti-social behavior, "The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."
Since Google's CEO has proclaimed the future of the web is no anonymity, does that make it a fact? If we keep hearing that privacy is dead and long buried, how long before we accept that anonymity is an anti-social behavior and a crime?
Security expert Bruce Schneier suggests that we protect our privacy if we are thinking about it, but we give up our privacy when we are not thinking about it.
Schneier wrote [6], "Here's the problem: The very companies whose CEOs eulogize privacy make their money by controlling vast amounts of their users' information. Whether through targeted advertising, cross-selling or simply convincing their users to spend more time on their site and sign up their friends, more information shared in more ways, more publicly means more profits. This means these companies are motivated to continually ratchet down the privacy of their services, while at the same time pronouncing privacy erosions as inevitable and giving users the illusion of control."
The loss of anonymity will endanger privacy [7]. It's unsettling to think "governments will demand" an end to anonymous identities. Even if Schmidt is Google's CEO, his message of anonymity as a dangerous thing is highly controversial. Google is in the business of mining and monetizing data, so isn't that a conflict of interest? Look how much Google knows about you [8] now.
Bruce Schneier [9] put it eloquently, "If we believe privacy is a social good, something necessary for democracy, liberty and human dignity, then we can't rely on market forces to maintain it."
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/google-ceo-schmidt-no-anonymity-future-web
-
From the start, there was never true anonymity on the interwebs.
-
Uhm, I'd quibble. Plenty of spoofing, anonymous remailers, proxy servers, daisy chain hacks, router cracks, etc you could use back in the day, though modern analysis techniques renders a lot of that a lot less opaque than it use to be.
-
I attended an FBI internet crimes task force presentation about 10 years ago, on a case where a search warrant on a computer in the US yielded images of children being sexually assaulted in real time. The case spanned the globe, and was ultimately tracked down to the UK, where the children were rescued and the perp arrested, by black clad, balaclava wearing, long gun toting tactical cops, no doubt.
Those that traffic in such things use every technique you mentioned. It makes tracking them difficult, but almost never impossible.
-
Architecture Matters
Posted By Julian Sanchez On August 16, 2010 @ 12:47 pm In Reaction Essay | Comments Disabled
In an astonishing New York Times op-ed [1] last week, former homeland security advisor Richard Falkenrath greeted news of a technology ban announced by the rulers of the United Arab Emirates with “approval, admiration and perhaps even a touch of envy.” In the name of national security, the UAE — soon to be mimicked by Saudi Arabia and India, among others — was threatening to limit the use of Blackberry mobile devices unless their Canadian manufacturer, Research in Motion (RIM), agreed to restructure their secure network to allow the government easier access to encrypted messages.
Of course, the Emirates had their own conception of what counts as “national security”: The announcement came mere weeks after the arrest of Badr Ali Saiwad Al Dhohori [2], an 18-year-old activist who had been using BlackBerry’s Messenger service to plan a (canceled) protest against rising gas prices. Indeed, for those familiar with encryption technology, it was hard to see the proposed BlackBerry bans as a useful anti-terror measure: Committed criminals and jihadists would have no difficulty securing their communications with freely available software that could be installed on any number of laptops or smartphones — and would have advance warning not to rely on the security provided by RIM’s network.
But the proposed ban soon led RIM to agree [3] to accommodate a number of authoritarian regimes known to practice pervasive monitoring and filtering [4] of the Internet as a means of political and social control. The message was delivered loud and clear to its real targets: Ordinary BlackBerry users who might have incidentally benefited from the network’s security, but lacked the resources, commitment, and technical savvy of criminals and terrorists.
The BlackBerry controversy helps to illustrate why perhaps the most frequently invoked metaphor — one might say cliché — in surveillance studies is the Panopticon [5], a prison designed for total, centralized surveillance, first designed by the English political philosopher Jeremy Bentham but popularized by French theorist Michel Foucault. The significance of the Panopticon for our purposes is that it is an explicitly architectural metaphor: It exerts a structural disciplinary power that extends far beyond the individual acts of observation it enables. Ideally, the warders can put up their feet and watch Seinfeld reruns all day, trusting that it will be enough for the prisoners to be aware that someone always could be watching them. A group of academics and journalists who brought a lawsuit [6] challenging the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program in 2006 alleged that just such a “chilling effect” was afflicting their communication with foreign sources.
I mention this because it highlights my lone point of agreement with the critics of Glenn Greenwald’s masterful — though, depressingly, far from comprehensive — summary of the explosive growth of American surveillance since 9/11. For it is, as Paul Rosenzweig argues [7], a “pointillist” portrait that emphasizes particular “abuses” and “excesses.” And this really does risk missing the forest for the trees — though pace Rosenzweig, I believe that if anything it understates the potential problems with the burgeoning surveillance state. More disturbing than the quantitative increase in surveillance Greenwald documents — and it is disturbing, when we consider that the sheer number of National Security Letters and FISA warrants issued annually dwarfs any plausible estimate of the number of terror supporters in the United States — are the qualitative and structural shifts in the nature of that surveillance.
Some of those qualitative changes are themselves driven by increases in the quantity of surveillance requests. A Sprint executive captured by security researcher Christopher Soghoian at last year’s ISS World surveillance conference explained how his firm was dealing with a growing number of demands from law enforcement:
[M]y major concern is the volume of requests. We have a lot of things that are automated but that’s just scratching the surface. One of the things, like with our GPS tool. We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy, so, just the sheer volume of requests they anticipate us automating other features, and I just don’t know how we’ll handle the millions and millions of requests that are going to come in.
Debates about surveillance policy typically focus on the formal legal constraints on government monitoring, but physical and technological architecture are often as important determinants of the real scope of surveillance in practice — a point pithily summed up by Lawrence Lessig’s maxim that “code is law.” Consider, as a thought experiment, the difference between a society in which police may, pursuant to some legal process, install cameras and microphones in private homes, and a society in which, pursuant to precisely same process, they may activate the cameras and microphones required to be installed in all homes.
The plummeting cost of data storage, the increasing ubiquity of network communications, and the vastly increased capacity of law enforcement to fruitfully analyze “transactional data” subject to far more anemic protections than the contents of communications all combine to make an extraordinary degree of monitoring both more feasible and more attractive to investigators, even holding constant the legal framework within which that monitoring occurs. A few decades ago, intelligence agents might have found it convenient to compare a list of everyone reading unsavory publications with a list of people who share group memberships with a suspicious number of subjects already under investigation — but they would have had no practical way of doing so. Now it is not only feasible, but inundated telecom providers and profit-seeking contractors are racing to find plug-and-play solutions that make the process ever cheaper and easier.
There’s also ample evidence [8] suggesting that individualized, subject-based monitoring of communications themselves is yielding to a broader algorithmic approach that seeks to monitor entire data streams. John Yoo, who wrote the (now repudiated) memoranda providing the legal basis for the NSA wiretapping program, for example, has described [9] a system in which “computers are initially searching through communications first and only bringing correlations to the attention of a human, to a security officer when there’s a certain level of confidence that they might involve terrorism.” Where once we identified targets and then looked for suspicious behavior or incriminating communications, the “new” approach — whose closest precedent may be the NSA’s scandalous SHAMROCK program [10] uncovered by the Church Committee’s investigations in the 1970s — involves monitoring behavior patterns and communications streams in search of targets.
To the extent that intelligence surveillance has been moving to this model, it is a mistake to view (for instance) the explosion in the use of National Security Letters to acquire transactional data as a separate concern from legislation authorizing broad “programs” of surveillance or “roving” wiretap warrants [11] that specify neither an individual target nor a particular communications facility to be monitored. These are complementary pieces of a broader investigatory strategy geared toward identifying targets.
I’ll have more — much more — to say about the specific empirical and legal arguments raised by our discussants as the conversation continues here. But the crucial macro-level point I’d like us to bear in mind is that the architectural shift in surveillance is potentially much more significant than a temporary spike in the number of warrants or NSLs issued over the past decade. History provides abundant proof [12] that this sort of large-scale monitoring, even when undertaken for initially legitimate purposes, invites abuse. And perhaps still more worrying, even in the absence of such abuse, the scope of state control is in myriad ways a function of what James C. Scott, in his seminal Seeing Like a State, has dubbed the “legibility” of populations. Surveillance infrastructures and databases built for benign purposes tend to persist even when their administrators cease to be benign.
Article printed from Cato Unbound: http://www.cato-unbound.org
URL to article: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/08/16/julian-sanchez/architecture-matters/
URLs in this post:
[1] New York Times op-ed: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10falkenrath.html?_r=1
[2] the arrest of Badr Ali Saiwad Al Dhohori: http://opennet.net/blog/2010/08/united-arab-emirates-arrests-activists-bans-blackberry-services
[3] agree: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-09/research-in-motion-saudis-reportedly-reach-messaging-agreement-u-s-says.html
[4] pervasive monitoring and filtering: http://opennet.net/research/regions/mena
[5] Panopticon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
[6] brought a lawsuit: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/politics/17nsa.html
[7] argues: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/08/13/paul-rosenzweig/the-sky-isnt-falling/
[8] ample evidence: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/section1006summary101608.pdf
[9] described: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/yoo.html
[10] the NSA’s scandalous SHAMROCK program: http://cryptome.org/nsa-shamrock.htm
[11] “roving” wiretap warrants: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/10/15/patriot-powers-roving-wiretaps/
[12] abundant proof: http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/16/opinion/op-sanchez16
-
The panopticon prisons were failures and almost all in the US are no longer in use.
-
Yeah, so now we're gonna expand the beta to the point we have enough storage capacity to record web surfing histories, locational data, text, cell, and landline conversations using criteria that is poorly defined by agencies frequently lacking oversight and accountability for periods of time yet to be determined. Can't imagine a government misusing capabilities like that.
-
So shut down the NSA? Get the US out of the intelligence business?
-
Nah, let's just put Hoover and Nixon in charge of 'em. That'll fix it.
-
Still waiting for some sot of concrete policy position......
-
Oversight and accountability with a sensible chain of command. Difficult concepts to master I know; took me to the age of 18 to impose them on the kitchens I managed. Or are you looking for something more Byzantine?
Out the next five days or so helping set up for an open house sponsored by the National Museum of Americans at War. Anyone at the DC area is welcome to stop by: vmmv.org.
-
Oversight and accountability with a sensible chain of command.
**The NSA doesn't have that now?**
-
How much transparency do you want for the NSA and other intel agencies?
-
No one forces you to go on the web or use websites or software with those loopholes. Aren't libertarians supposed to believe in the rights of individuals to freely make choices in terms of commerce?
-
**The NSA doesn't have that now?**
The folks at Fort Meade play stuff close to the chest so it's pretty hard to know in general, though it's clear the most the congresscritters charged w/ oversight couldn't shake a transistor out of their shoe. "The Puzzlepalace" is a good read about those folks.
The NSA is an awful small slice of the intelligence gathering pie and someone with your googlefu ought to be able to drum up story after story of alphabet agencies that fail to share timely intelligence due to chain of command, turf considerations, and so on. Are you arguing that a system as vast, ad hoc, and territorial as the one the US has built cannot be subject to misuse? Look at the battles between the Air Force and the Navy over which refueling tanker nozzle should be used and then multiply it by each intelligence agency and gathering technique and you'll have an approximation of the scope of the issue. My experience running much smaller and less complex organizations suggests that when that much gray area exists gross pathologies are a given.
-
A wee bit of bureaucratic overreach here:
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/20/she-could-have-given-someone-a
Reason Magazine
She Could Have Given Someone a Nasty Paper Cut With Those Checks
Jacob Sullum | August 20, 2010
Last year Steve Bierfeldt, director of development at Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty, sued the Transportation Security Administration after he was detained and grilled at a St. Louis airport because he was carrying about $4,700 in cash (proceeds from one of the organization's conferences). The lawsuit, filed on Bierfeldt's behalf by the ACLU, prompted the TSA to issue a directive saying that "screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security." Apparently not everyone got the memo. Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Daniel Rubin describes the experience of Kathy Parker of Elkton, Maryland, who recently underwent a purse search at Philadelphia International Airport that ranged far beyond the requirements of airline security:
"Everything in my purse was out, including my wallet and my checkbook. I had two prescriptions in there. One was diet pills. This was embarrassing. A TSA officer said, 'Hey, I've always been curious about these. Do they work?'
"I was just so taken aback, I said, 'Yeah.' "
What happened next, she says, was more than embarrassing. It was infuriating.
That same screener started emptying her wallet. "He was taking out the receipts and looking at them," she said
"I understand that TSA is tasked with strengthening national security but [it] surely does not need to know what I purchased at Kohl's or Wal-Mart," she wrote in her complaint, which she sent me last week.
She says she asked what he was looking for and he replied, "Razor blades." She wondered, "Wouldn't that have shown up on the metal detector?"
In a side pocket she had tucked a deposit slip and seven checks made out to her and her husband, worth about $8,000.
Her thought: "Oh, my God, this is none of his business."
Two Philadelphia police officers joined at least four TSA officers who had gathered around her. After conferring with the TSA screeners, one of the Philadelphia officers told her he was there because her checks were numbered sequentially, which she says they were not.
"It's an indication you've embezzled these checks," she says the police officer told her. He also told her she appeared nervous. She hadn't before that moment, she says.
She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. "That's my money," she remembers saying. The officer's reply? "It's not your money."
Eventually Parker was allowed to proceed with her checks, but not until after police called her husband in Maryland to see if maybe they were in the middle of "a divorce situation" and she was trying to abscond with money that was partly his (a scenario rather different from the fake-check embezzlement theory that supposedly justified Parker's detention). As usual in cases like this, the TSA claims police were called because Parker's behavior "escalated," which is TSA code for questioning anything its screeners do.
[Thanks to dbcooper for the tip.]
-
**The NSA doesn't have that now?**
The folks at Fort Meade play stuff close to the chest so it's pretty hard to know in general, though it's clear the most the congresscritters charged w/ oversight couldn't shake a transistor out of their shoe. "The Puzzlepalace" is a good read about those folks.
The NSA is an awful small slice of the intelligence gathering pie and someone with your googlefu ought to be able to drum up story after story of alphabet agencies that fail to share timely intelligence due to chain of command, turf considerations, and so on. Are you arguing that a system as vast, ad hoc, and territorial as the one the US has built cannot be subject to misuse? Look at the battles between the Air Force and the Navy over which refueling tanker nozzle should be used and then multiply it by each intelligence agency and gathering technique and you'll have an approximation of the scope of the issue. My experience running much smaller and less complex organizations suggests that when that much gray area exists gross pathologies are a given.
Anything is potentially subject to misuse. My concern is that the system has become so big, it's utterly impossible to be used effectively.
-
A seminar host is looking to book my flight, but the Airline company wants my birth date. WTF? Isn't that something I am supposed to keep rather close to the vest for reasons of making identity theft harder?
What can I do here?
-
Your birthdate as well as legal name is obtained by the airline to be given to the TSA for prescreening prior to your flight. If your name, birthdate doesn't match when you attempt to board your flight, you won't be allowed to fly.
-
http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/acceptable_documents.shtm
ID Requirements for Airport Checkpoints
Airtravel
Identity Matters
Effective June 21, 2008, adult passengers (18 and over) are required to show a U.S. federal or state-issued photo ID that contains the following: name, date of birth, gender, expiration date and a tamper-resistant feature in order to be allowed to go through the checkpoint and onto their flight.
Passengers who do not or cannot present an acceptable ID will have to provide information to the Transportation Security Officer performing Travel Document Checking duties in order to verify their identity. Passengers who are cleared through this process may be subject to additional screening. Passengers whose identity cannot be verified by TSA may not be allowed to enter the screening checkpoint or onto an airplane.
-
That is a separate point I think. My host could not even buy my ticket without giving my birthdate-- which is now in American Airlines computer records.
-
All airlines must now get DOBs for passengers when tickets are purchased. The Name and DOB gets passed on to the TSA.
-
Duh. I get that. My point is that American Airlines also gets it and my personal ID data is just that more "out there", thus facilitating ID theft.
-
Your name and DOB are probably out there from a variety of sources. Your SSN is much more important when it comes to identity theft.
-
So, "privacy is dead and I should just get over it"?
-
Privacy takes effort and caution. There is no absolute privacy as there is no absolute security. I'm less concerned with a big corp like AA having my personal info than what can be gained by private investigators working for criminal cartels.
-
Privacy does seem to be dead....
24 Hour Fitness using fingerprints to identify members
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fitness-fingerprint-20100828,0,7547156.story
-
How does that make privacy dead?
-
I guess my point is that I find it invasive/offensive that a simple local gym requires my fingerprints.
-
In a free market, you are free to not patronize any business that does things you don't like.
-
Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans
As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.
“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.
Here’s a video of the vans in action.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGCd0KPJcMs&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back. Absorbed rays indicate dense material such as steel. Scattered rays indicate less-dense objects that can include explosives, drugs, or human bodies. That capability makes them powerful tools for security, law enforcement, and border control.
It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)
“It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”
AS&E’s Reiss counters privacy critics by pointing out that the ZBV scans don’t capture nearly as much detail of human bodies as their airport counterparts. The company’s marketing materials say that its “primary purpose is to image vehicles and their contents,” and that “the system cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race, sex or age of the person.”
Though Reiss admits that the systems “to a large degree will penetrate clothing,” he points to the lack of features in images of humans like the one shown at right, far less detail than is obtained from the airport scans. “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says.
But EPIC’s Rotenberg says that the scans, like those in the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. “Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” he says. Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure, he points out. “If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.”
The TSA’s official policy dictates that full-body scans must be viewed in a separate room from any guards dealing directly with subjects of the scans, and that the scanners won’t save any images. Just what sort of safeguards might be in place for AS&E’s scanning vans isn’t clear, given that the company won’t reveal just which law enforcement agencies, organizations within the DHS, or foreign governments have purchased the equipment. Reiss says AS&E has customers on “all continents except Antarctica.”
Reiss adds that the vans do have the capability of storing images. “Sometimes customers need to save images for evidentiary reasons,” he says. “We do what our customers need.”
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/08/24/full-body-scan-technology-deployed-in-street-roving-vans/
-
We can be dosed with X-rays without our knowledge?!? :x :x :x
And here's this:
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.
(See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)
It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)
In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.
The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.
(See the misadventures of the CIA.)
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.
Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism."
(Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)
The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state — with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.
Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's — including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous — decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
(Comment on this story.)
Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."
Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2013150,00.html#ixzz0y29d2EfD
Also see for the UK
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1976541,00.html
and for the USA
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1973131,00.html
-
I think it's pretty clear that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy under your clothes in a public place. I don't think the backscatter x-ray vans could be legally used in public places in the US.
As far as the GPS tracking by law enforcement, the court agreed with my argument that you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy driving your vehicle on public roads.
-
A Surveillance State Coda
Posted by Julian Sanchez
The program of warrantless NSA wiretapping (and data mining) authorized by President George W. Bush shortly after the 9/11 attacks prompted a flurry of intense debate over its legality when it was disclosed by The New York Times back in 2005. Those arguments have, by now, been so thoroughly rehearsed that there’s not a whole lot new to say about it.
But like Monty Python’s Black Knight, some of those old arguments keep popping up — as evidenced by John Eastman’s contribution to the Cato Unbound roundtable on the digital surveillance state we held last month. So while the roundtable’s over, I thought it would be convenient to round up a compact version of the main arguments in one place, for the convenience of folks who might not want to slog through the many law review articles that have been written on the subject.
The touchstone for modern analysis of executive war powers is, by general consensus, the tripartite schema elaborated by Justice Jackson in his concurrence in the Youngstown steel seizure case :
1. When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate. In these circumstances, and in these only, may he be said (for what it may be worth) to personify the federal sovereignty. If his act is held unconstitutional under these circumstances, it usually means that the Federal Government, as an undivided whole, lacks power…
2. When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain…
3. When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter… Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system.
Using this as our starting point, it becomes clear that an analysis of the NSA program entails answering a series of distinct (though related) questions. First, we need to determine which level of the Youngstown schema applies. If we’re in Youngstown’s Category I, then the NSA program was illegal only if it exceeded the constitutional constraints on government surveillance established by the Fourth Amendment. If, on the other hand, we’re in Category III, a constitutionally permissible surveillance program might nevertheless be illegal. So I’ll consider three questions in turn: Did the NSA program violate federal statute? If so, does the statute trump whatever inherent power the president might enjoy as commander in chief in this context? Finally, does the program, as it’s been publicly described, violate the Fourth Amendment? An affirmative answer to either the first pair of questions or the third will entail that the NSA program was illegal.
The AUMF
The statutory question may seem like something of a no-brainer: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 states explicitly that its procedures establish the “exclusive means” for domestic electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes. In this case, the obvious answer is the right one. But the Justice Department has attempted to claim that Congress cleverly managed to repeal the “exclusive means” language without telling anyone about it back in 2001, when it passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. Probably the most decisive demolition of that argument was offered by David Kris, who currently heads the National Security Division at the Department of Justice, but it’s worth reviewing briefly why this argument is so implausible.
The central problem with reliance on the AUMF is that FISA itself contains a provision providing a 15-day surveillance grace period following a declaration of war. As the legislative conference report explains, this was intended to provide time for Congress to consider whether any wartime modifications to the FISA structure were necessary. Plainly, then, Congress did not imagine or intend that a declaration of war (or “authorization of force”) would in itself implicitly loosen FISA’s fetters beyond that grace period.
Moreover, Congress has repeatedly amended FISA since the 9/11 attacks, both in the PATRIOT Act passed almost simultaneously with the AUMF, and in subsequent legislation over a period of years. As Glenn Greenwald recounted in his lead essay for the Cato roundtable, Congress has expanded government surveillance powers in a variety of ways, but none of these prior to the Protect America Act of 2007 (superseded by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008) approached the breadth of the NSA program, and even these establish at least a modicum of judicial oversight, however inadequate. Again, this history sits uneasily with the premise that Congress understood itself to have authorized such broad domestic surveillance when it passed the AUMF.
Indeed, as former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle explained in a Washington Post op-ed shortly after the revelation of the warrantless wiretap program, the Senate explicitly rejected language sought by the White House that would have extended the authorization to actions within the United States. Then–attorney general Alberto Gonzales has publicly acknowledged that the Bush administration contemplated asking for a more specific amendment to FISA authorizing something like the NSA program, but concluded that it would be “difficult, if not impossible” to get such an amendment adopted. We are being asked to believe, in other words, that Congress intended to implicitly grant authority that the administration was certain would be refused had it been requested overtly. It is, as Justice Frankfurter put it in Youngstown, “quite impossible … to find secreted in the interstices of legislation the very grant of power which Congress consciously withheld.”
Basic principles of statutory construction disfavor inferring implicit repeal of specific statutory language from more general authorizations, except in the face of “overwhelming evidence” of congressional intent — and the Court has accordingly rejected parallel arguments in several recent War on Terror cases, as in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, where the court found “nothing in the text or legislative history of the AUMF even hinting that Congress intended to expand or alter the authorization” for military commissions spelled out in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The evidence here is indeed overwhelming, and it uniformly cuts against the fanciful proposition that Congress somehow enacted a kind of sub silentio repeal of FISA. I’m inclined to assume this argument was offered primarily because of an understandable reluctance to rely entirely on a radical theory of inherent and preclusive executive powers, to which I turn next.
The President’s Inherent Authority
The first thing to observe with respect to claims of inherent executive authority is that if we exclude non-binding dicta, the evidence for a constitutional power to conduct warrantless domestic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes is almost wholly negative. That is to say, it turns on inferences from questions the Supreme Court has declined to directly address rather than on its affirmative holdings. As we’ll see, this is a thin reed on which to hang ambitious claims.
Consider, for instance, the so-called Keith case. In addressing the scope of presidential power to authorize warrantless surveillance against domestic national security threats, the majority noted that they had “not addressed, and express no opinion as to, the issues which may be involved with respect to activities of foreign powers or their agents.” But in that very case, the unanimous majority held that a warrant was required in cases involving domestic national security threats, resolving a lacuna expressed in very similar language in a footnote to a previous ruling involving wiretaps:
Whether safeguards other than prior authorization by a magistrate would satisfy the Fourth Amendment in a situation involving the national security is a question not presented by this case.
The arguments deployed against unchecked executive discretion in Keith clearly have substantial cross-application to the War on Terror, which in many respects bears as much resemblance to those domestic threats as it does to traditional nation state–sponsored espionage and warfare. It will suffice to note, however, that declining to foreclose a power because the fact pattern under consideration provided no occasion to consider the distinct issues involved, as the Court did in both Katz and Keith, is not at all the same as affirmatively asserting it, let alone defining its scope — a point to which I’ll return in the next section.
Nevertheless, let’s suppose arguendo that there is some such inherent power, whether broad or narrow. Eastman and other defenders of the NSA program still err in conflating inherent power with preclusive or indefeasible power. As a simple conceptual matter, this cannot be right, or else the third Youngstown category would collapse into the second: If all “inherent” presidential powers were per se immune to Congressional limitation, Category III would be superfluous, since it would never yield a result different from analysis under Category II.
Fortunately, we need not restrict ourselves to conceptual analysis, because precedent and practice both speak directly to the question, and both support robust legislative power to constrain even those presidential powers grounded in Article II. The legislature has, from the founding era on, assumed that its Article I power to make “rules for the government of the land and naval forces” enabled it to cabin the discretion of the commander in chief, often in frankly picayune ways, by establishing general rules limiting the conduct of a conflict. Prior to the Truman administration there was little indication that presidents saw this as encroaching upon sacrosanct executive prerogatives. Even Lincoln — probably the most obvious early example of a wartime president acting without or contrary to statutory authority — did not claim some general constitutional power to defy Congress. Rather, he argued that when hostilities commenced during a congressional recess, he had acted as he thought necessary given the impracticality of securing advance approval, while acknowledging that it fell to the legislature to ratify or overrule his judgment once it reconvened.
In the few cases where the Supreme Court has had occasion to rule on the scope of executive power at “lowest ebb,” it has repeatedly confirmed that federal law binds the president even in war. In Little v. Barreme, during a conflict with France, the Court found that a specific congressional authorization for the seizure of ships bound to French ports rendered invalid an executive order that also permitted seizure of ships bound from those ports. And this was so, the Court noted, even though the president’s own commander-in-chief powers would have permitted him this discretion had Congress not spoken. Since the inauguration of the War on Terror, the Court has reaffirmed the validity of such statutory limits on executive discretion, as in Hamdan. Bush’s own Office of Legal Counsel ultimately repudiated a series of memos, penned by John Yoo, that had relied on a more expansive conception of executive power to justify the administration’s War on Terror programs, concluding that they were “not supported by convincing reasoning.”
There is, by general consensus, some “preclusive core” to the executive’s commander-in-chief authority. This includes, at the least, a prerogative of “superintendence”: Congress could not appoint Nancy Pelosi commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and forbid the president to remove her. Most commentators see it as similarly foreclosing efforts to achieve the same end by a series of micromanagerial statutes commanding specific tactics be employed at particular times. But the notion that this preclusive core encompasses discretion to unilaterally disregard a general statutory framework governing protracted electronic surveillance of U.S. persons on American soil is simply insupportable in the face of both history and precedent. The argument is, if anything, more absurd when it comes to the government’s illegal acquisition of the statutorily protected calling records of tens of millions of Americans, the vast majority of whom obviously have no ties to terrorism or Al Qaeda. Attempts to stitch together a countervailing line from desultory snatches of language about the president’s role as “sole organ” in foreign affairs are entertaining as a sort of exercise in experimental Burroughsian cut-up narrative, but as legal analysis they seem pretty desperate.
The Fourth Amendment
Finally, we turn to the Fourth Amendment. I will, for the most part, consider how the Fourth Amendment applies to the NSA surveillance program prior to the 2008 passage of the FISA Amendments Act.
As Eastman notes, while in most contexts the prohibition on “unreasonable searches and seizures” requires surveillance to be authorized by a probable cause warrant based on individualized suspicion, there are a variety of circumstances in which warrantless searches may nevertheless be reasonable. While this is not the place to conduct a detailed survey of such “special needs” exemptions, such exceptions tend to involve cases in which the subjects of the search are already understood to enjoy a diminished expectation of privacy (students in school), where the searches are standardized and minimally intrusive, where the targets are in a position to raise challenges before a neutral magistrate if necessary, and where prior court authorization would be highly impractical. No exception that I am aware of can plausibly be stretched so far as to permit sustained, discretionary, warrantless electronic surveillance of members of the general population — a method recognized to be so intrusive that in the criminal context, federal statute requires investigators to meet a higher standard than applies to ordinary physical search warrants.
It’s worth noting in passing that the existence of the statutory FISA framework is at least arguably relevant to the Fourth Amendment analysis here. What measures are “reasonable” will often depend on context, and upon the available alternatives: The use of lethal force in self-defense might be found reasonable as a last resort, but not when the victim has an easy avenue of escape or a taser handy. Similarly, if the only alternative to conventional criminal courts were warrantless surveillance — if Congress had made no provision for a highly secretive court to consider classified applications under secure conditions, with ample flexibility in cases of emergency — one might be more inclined to sympathize with some degree of executive improvisation. In light of the elaborate mechanisms Congress has provided, an appeal to impracticality is considerably less compelling.
But let’s bracket that for the moment, and again suppose for the sake of argument that the president has some inherent authority to conduct warrantless domestic wartime surveillance. Let’s further assume away any statutory problems. Can the NSA program be squared with the Fourth Amendment injunction that searches be reasonable, based on what little we know of it? It seems highly unlikely.
Multiple accounts suggest that the NSA program involved algorithmic selection of surveillance targets, possibly triggered by keywords within the communications themselves, almost certainly based on pattern analysis of calling records or other transactional data. The result, according to the Bush administration, was that the international communications of approximately 500 persons within the United States were being intercepted at any given time. Since the program operated for several years, both before and after being disclosed, a conservative estimate would place the total number of persons subject to surveillance in the thousands, and most likely in the tens of thousands.
What did all this spying yield? In 2006, under the headline “Surveillance Net Yields Few Suspects,” the Washington Post reported:
Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well.
Nearly all the “leads” produced by the program appear to have been dead ends. Indeed, despite the assurances of the Bush administration that the NSA program had saved thousands of lives, a postmortem review by the intelligence community’s inspectors general found that officials they spoke to “had difficulty citing specific instances where [NSA program] reporting had directly contributed to counterterrorism successes,” though a classified version of the report apparently cites a handful of instances in which the program “may have contributed.”
As a point of reference, the government’s reporting suggests that under criminal wiretap orders, about 30 percent of intercepted communications contain incriminating content. Since “minimization” of innocent communications is necessarily imperfect, and since even the most hardened criminals presumably spend most of their time conversing about more mundane matters, the number of targets engaged in at least some incriminating communication is clearly far higher. That’s what one would expect when evidence establishing “probable cause” must justify surveillance — and Bush officials have claimed the NSA program’s targeting met the same standards. The evidence suggests otherwise.
I’m happy to grant that we should accept a somewhat lower “hit rate” when interception is geared toward protecting the nation from major terror attacks. But if the requirement that searches be “reasonable” is not to be rendered completely vacuous or totally severed from even a diluted standard of “probable cause,” then there must be some substantive test of whether such highly intrusive techniques are actually in service of that vital state interest. It cannot possibly be enough to simply observe that the president has uttered the magical incantation “War on Terror.” And it cannot possibly be enough that a program involving interception of the private conversations of thousands or tens of thousands of U.S. persons “may have contributed” to a handful of successful investigations. The question is closer with respect to post-FISAAA programs of interception, which are at least subject to some modicum of independent oversight, but unless we have gotten vastly better at sifting the guilty from the innocent, grave constitutional doubts should remain.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/a-surveillance-state-coda/
-
Second Post:
Ohio apologized to 'Idol' star for illegal snooping
Police, BMV clerk checked out Bowersox on state databases
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2010 02:56 AM
BY RANDY LUDLOW
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Should public employees who improperly accessed information about singer Crystal Bowersox be criminally charged?
American Idol runner-up Crystal Bowersox gained national acclaim belting out her style of folksy blues on the popular TV show.
But some of the attention the Toledo-area singer received back home in Ohio was unflattering, as police and others improperly checked to see if she had a criminal record or blemishes on her driving record.
From computers with access to personal information in confidential state databases, employees of five police agencies and a municipal court rummaged through Bowersox's background.
And in Columbus, an Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles clerk examined vehicles registered in the performer's name, and the home computer of an assistant city prosecutor was used to check on the newly minted star.
An Ohio Department of Public Safety official apologized in a July 1 letter to Bowersox for the unauthorized breaches of her privacy and wrote that there was no evidence that she had become an identity-theft victim.
"I had no idea it happened," Bowersox told The Blade of Toledo last night from her home in Los Angeles. "I'm disgusted by it.
"You feel violated, but I guess it comes with the territory."
The Bowersox checks are reminiscent of a case two years ago, when The Dispatch reported that state computers were improperly tapped for personal information on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, also known as "Joe the Plumber." Conducting a background check for an unauthorized purpose is illegal.
The State Highway Patrol detected the searches on Bowersox in late May, after she became an Idol finalist, when a patrol official decided to run an audit for suspicious checks.
Eight improper checks were found between Feb. 24 and May 27, including by police departments in Millersburg, Pemberville, Xenia and at the Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster, as well as the Putnam County sheriff's office.
Those checks, plus one involving the Columbus city attorney's office, were conducted through the Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway, which is administered by the attorney general's office.
The law-enforcement employees who misused the system to check on Bowersox received punishments from their employers ranging from a two-week suspension to written reprimands. Such violations can be punished criminally, but that call is left to local officials, said Ted Hart, a spokesman for the attorney general.
Shawnda Martin, an assistant Columbus prosecutor, received a week off without pay for her brush with Bowersox on May 25, said chief prosecutor Lara Baker.
Martin was working on her home computer checking the backgrounds of criminal defendants while a friend watched American Idol. A horrified Martin returned from a trip to the kitchen to find that her friend had typed Bowersox's name into her computer, Baker said.
In Erie County, an employee of Huron Municipal Court was accused of using the Ohio Courts Network, operated by the Ohio Supreme Court, to access information on Bowersox. The employee was forced to resign and could face a misdemeanor charge, the patrol said.
Only one person has been charged with illegally snooping on Bowersox.
At the Bureau of Motor Vehicles headquarters on the Hilltop, clerk Jay Wright, 47, of the Near East Side, was fired from his $43,434-a-year job on June 22 for checking Bowersox's vehicle-registration information Feb. 24.
The 17-year state employee said he was merely curious. "I saw she was indeed from Ohio ... and thought, 'Great, a local girl may have a shot at making it big' and that was that. At no time did I take her personal information, print it or commit it to memory for any financial or personal gain," Wright told officials.
He was indicted last month for unauthorized use of property, a fifth-degree felony carrying up to a year in prison. Wright pleaded not guilty Friday. Patrol spokesman Lt. Gary Lewis said the case was the only one in which the patrol had jurisdiction.
As for Bowersox, she said she wouldn't sue and isn't worried about any information found on her record.
"It would have said that I was poor, was on Medicaid, and I was on welfare with my child, and that my driving record was immaculate. My record has nothing on it.
"My pre- Idol life, I was raised poor and did everything I could to get by in life, and that's all they would find. I'm an honest person."
http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/09/09/copy/ohio-apologized-to-idol-star-for-illegal-snooping.html?adsec=politics&sid=101
-
You'll note that accessing the state and federal databases are felonies. The systems are auditable, meaning that you cannot access them without leaving a digital "paper trail".
-
Sincere question:
So what about accessing them from a cyber cafe or a public library?
-
Those databases can only be accessed only by dedicated terminals. Without getting into the techno-structure, they are very secure. It's not something you can access by the internet.
-
Thank you.
-
Woof,
Didn't the same kind of thing happen to Joe the plumber?
P.C.
-
Yes. Also from the state of Ohio, If I recall correctly.
-
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cjisd/ncic.htm
Security and quality controls: The head of the CJIS Systems Agency—the criminal justice agency that has overall responsibility for the administration and usage of NCIC within a district, state, territory, or federal agency—appoints a CJIS systems officer (CSO) from its agency. The CSO is responsible for monitoring system use, enforcing system discipline and security, and assuring that all users follow operating procedures. NCIC policy establishes a number of security measures to ensure the privacy and integrity of the data. The information passing through the network is encrypted to prevent unauthorized access. Each user of the system is authenticated to ensure proper levels of access for every transaction. To further ascertain and verify the accuracy and integrity of the data, each agency must periodically validate its records. Agencies also must undergo periodic audits to ensure data quality and adherence to all security provisions.
-
You'll note that accessing the state and federal databases are felonies. The systems are auditable, meaning that you cannot access them without leaving a digital "paper trail".
Perhaps I missed it, but has anyone been charged with a felony?
-
At the Bureau of Motor Vehicles headquarters on the Hilltop, clerk Jay Wright, 47, of the Near East Side, was fired from his $43,434-a-year job on June 22 for checking Bowersox's vehicle-registration information Feb. 24.
The 17-year state employee said he was merely curious. "I saw she was indeed from Ohio ... and thought, 'Great, a local girl may have a shot at making it big' and that was that. At no time did I take her personal information, print it or commit it to memory for any financial or personal gain," Wright told officials.
He was indicted last month for unauthorized use of property, a fifth-degree felony carrying up to a year in prison. Wright pleaded not guilty Friday. Patrol spokesman Lt. Gary Lewis said the case was the only one in which the patrol had jurisdiction.
-
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i_29YKZdSnooBzedGCwrNGaqfyDgD9I4IR7G1
Lt. Gary Lewis of the State Highway Patrol said Thursday that the agency audited databases in May and found files on Bowersox had been improperly accessed eight times.
Lewis says the audit reflected a 2009 state law cracking down on unauthorized record-checking. It was prompted by checks done on another Ohio celebrity, the 2008 campaign figure known as "Joe the Plumber."
-
Saw that, but don't recall any of the Joe the Plumber folks ending up in court. Might have snuck beneath the radar, but I missed it.
-
http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/10/democrat-goon-charged-with-snooping-on.html
Looks like one got a wrist slap at the most, in the JTP snooping scandal. Disgusting.
I know that sheriffs have gone to federal prison for using NCIC to run their election opposition.
-
Woof,
Update on Joe the Plumber:
www.sayanythingblog.com/entry/toledo_police_clerk_charged_for_illegally_accessing_joe_the_plumbers_record/
P.C.
-
Is the Fourth Amendment Really About ‘Privacy’?
Posted by Julian Sanchez
Back in June, the American Civil Liberties Union launched a new Web hub called Spy Files, which promises to be an invaluable resource for those of us who make a point of watching the watchers. Probably the most interesting document available on the site at launch was a thorough state by state survey of law enforcement surveillance of protected political and religious association over the past decade. They rounded up a truly disturbing number of instances, spanning 33 states, just from press reports, of undercover officers infiltrating anti-war groups and mosques without obvious grounds to suspect wrongdoing. In the aggregate, as the report itself notes, the effect is eerily reminiscent of the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO operation, which targeted groups deemed “subversive” in the 1960s and 70s.
Following the exposure of COINTELPRO and a spate of related intelligence scandals uncovered by Senate investigations during the 70s, the latitude of federal investigators to covertly infiltrate domestic groups was somewhat constrained by Executive Order 12333, signed by President Reagan in 1981. But state and local law enforcement often have a relatively free hand, because under the modern understanding of the Fourth Amendment, the Constitution is concerned only government actions that violate a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” which courts have generally understood as limited to the exposure of what was previously secret. When we entrust sensitive records to third parties—be they banks, Internet Service Providers, or other members of our churches or political organizations—we “assume the risk” that they will reveal the information to the government, according to the courts’ logic, and so waive our expectation of privacy.
Legal scholars have long been critical of the reasoning behind this “third party doctrine,” in particular the “assumption of risk” argument, but traditionally they’ve accepted the basic frame that the Fourth Amendment should fundamentally be understood as concerned with protecting “privacy”—though the term itself does not appear in the Constitution—and argued that the court has interpreted the concept too narrowly. Yet a growing number of investigative techniques—from GPS location tracking to DNA analysis—allow the government to conduct an intuitively troubling degree of monitoring, potentially on a vast scale, by targeting information that is at least in some sense “public.”
One way of dealing with this within the current paradigm is to seek to draw more nuanced distinctions between dimensions of privacy, which was the approach I took in a recent post on long-term GPS monitoring. Along similar lines, one might try to argue, say, that people reasonably expect their genetic profiles to remain private even if such a profile could in principle be extrapolated from residual DNA on a fork “abandoned” in a public restaurant. The key move here is to argue that “publicity” is not transitive: Private (and so protected) facts may be extrapolated from the aggregation of individually public events or from high-tech analysis of public objects or information. As I argued in the previous post, Kyllo v. U.S. can be read to support this principle.
Several fascinating recent papers, however, have instead argued that the root of the trouble with current Fourth Amendment doctrine is the very idea that the prohibition on “unreasonable searches” must be viewed primarily through the lens of privacy. If we consider public surveillance camera networks, or some recent cases involving “dragnet” location tracking by law enforcement, I think we find that whatever intuitive unease we feel about the methods employed has less to do with a sense that the individual “right to privacy” of any particular person has been violated than with concerns about the government monitoring the citizenry as a whole in these ways. In his new paper “Fourth Amendment Pragmatism,” Daniel Solove therefore argues for a radical remedy: We should dispense entirely with an analysis that treats the violation of a “reasonable expectation of privacy” as the sine qua non of a Fourth Amendment “search,” and instead “regulate whenever government information gathering creates problems of reasonable significance.”
Solove’s critique of the current approach is quite cogent: The “action” in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, so to speak, overwhelmingly surrounds the threshold question of whether a particular investigative technique counts as a Fourth Amendment “search,” and though the standard is supposed to be that “reasonable expectation of privacy,” the Court’s rulings on what falls within that ambit don’t match up terribly well with people’s actual expectations as revealed by the limited empirical data we have. We end up with a largely binary system of regulation where (with a few exceptions) techniques classified as “searches” require the same full-blown probable cause warrant necessary to search a home—though the primary remedy for violations of the warrant requirement is the “exclusionary rule” prohibiting the introduction of improperly obtained evidence at criminal trial, which is not always the primary concern. Everything that doesn’t count as a “search,” on the other hand, is left wholly unregulated, at least by the federal Constitution—leaving our privacy in those contexts at the tender mercies of the Congress and state courts. As Solove argues, it would make more sense for the scope of the Fourth Amendment to be interpreted substantially more broadly, with the understanding that not every search rises to the level of requiring a full probable cause warrant to pass muster as “reasonable.”
Yet Solove’s proposed standard—”regulate whenever government information gathering creates problems of reasonable significance”—does not seem like much of a standard at all, and indeed, does not seem especially “pragmatic,” in at least a couple of ways. First, whatever the theoretically best interpretive strategy might be, it seems awfully unrealistic to expect the courts to simply jettison half a century of Fourth Amendment precedent wholesale. Nor, if we think predictability is an important component of the “rule of law,” would such a radical move be obviously desirable—though we could imagine a gradual transition to something closer to Solove’s approach via a series of narrower incremental rulings. Second, this doesn’t give lower courts much guidance when it comes town to decide cases involving particular sets of facts, either with respect to the scope question or the remedy question; it seems like an invitation to a national crazy-quilt of inconsistent judicial legislation. To understand what Solove means by “problems of reasonable significance,” we have to turn to his brilliant and nuanced “Taxonomy of Privacy,” which makes perceptive and subtle distinctions between a dizzying array different types of privacy harms. Nuance is certainly a scholarly virtue, but it’s at best a mixed blessing in legal rules. Solove’s schema is so sophisticated and complex that it seems bound to yield a wildly unpredictable series of ad hoc decisions based on a judge’s idiosyncratic sense of how to “balance” a welter of incommensurable values. Solove anticipates this objection, but his reply—that Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is already a farrago largely unmoored from the text of the Constitution, so this wouldn’t be any worse—is not exactly reassuring.
An alternative approach—more firmly anchored in the text of the Fourth Amendment, and yielding something more closely resembling a genuine standard—is offered by Yale’s Jed Rubenfeld in his article “The End of Privacy,” which I wrote about last year. Rubenfeld’s Big Idea is that we have ignored the crucial role of “security” in the Fourth Amendment. We’re now accustomed to arguments over the “tradeoff” between the competing values of “security” and the “privacy” protected by the Fourth Amendment, but by its own terms, the Fourth Amendment stipulates that “the right of the people to be secure…against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” We tend to read this, in effect, as simply saying that the right against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated—so that the words “people” and “secure” don’t end up doing any real work. But as Rubenfeld notes, “security” was actually a significant legal concept in the minds of the Framers—something free people enjoyed by contrast with the insecurity generated by arbitrary and discretionary government power. Returning to the question of informants, consider the type of insecurity experienced by East Germans under the Stasi, as illustrated in the magnificent film The Lives of Others. The effect of that kind of total surveillance state was not limited to those who were actually being informed upon or wiretapped, because the terrifying reality was that you could never be sure. Any call might be recorded; any friend or colleague or lover might actually be on the payroll of the secret police. This knowledge could wreak havoc on interpersonal intimacy and chill potential dissent even for those whose individual privacy was never actually invaded.
To think of the Fourth Amendment this way—as not exclusively about privacy, but about “the right of the people to be secure”—is necessarily to take a more architectural view of its protections. But Rubenfeld offers something closer to an applicable test: Rather than asking whether an individual reasonable expectation of privacy has been violated, we ask whether people would remain secure in their liberties if a particular search method were pervasive. If it would not, we ask what restrictions—such as requiring a probable cause warrant or “specific and articulable facts”—would sufficiently narrow the method’s application so as to leave reasonable citizens secure.
Rubenfeld’s approach, to be sure, is not without its own problems. But as technology increasingly enables mass, population-level monitoring by government, often making use of information that is not absolutely secret and private (because, for instance, it has been turned over to an array of commercial entities, even if no one business has all the information) it may be necessary to move beyond a view of the Fourth Amendment as strictly concerned with an individual privacy right. My right to privacy, after all, is something that can be infringed by any old person—not merely by the government. On the currently dominant view, then, the government violates privacy (and the Fourth Amendment) just in case it performs actions that would be privacy violations if conducted by anyone. Yet the Framers had good reason to be particularly concerned with the social implications of government information gathering. Those concerns had less to do with “privacy” as such than with the structural balance between personal autonomy and state control—considerations that could stand to loom much larger in our thinking about the Fourth Amendment.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/is-the-fourth-amendment-really-about-privacy/
-
The majority of human history, there wasn't much in the way of privacy. Hunter-gatherer tribes or agricultural villages, you were known and given the living conditions, most everything about at all times was seen/heard/smelled by those around you.
Only in recent times, in cities and suburbs with individual dwellings, did we develop a sense of privacy that we have now.
Were the 4th about "security", then why did the law enforcement of the time of the founders not have any restriction imposed on it by this concept?
The founders were accustomed to the redcoats kicking in doors to search without anything more the the authority of the crown. They imposed the 4th to insure that American law enforcement obtained a warrant from an independent magistrate prior to the door kicking. You'll note that they did not forbid search and seizure, just imposed standards that had to be met before it could be done.
-
Think you are missing some nuance lurking between "security" and "secure in their persons." I'm sorting though some of the links in the piece, but a fundamental question they seem to be circling is "can you be secure in your person if the government can correlate your email, cell phone, purchase history, vehicle, locational, data at their leisure and correlate it as they desire to demonstrate if a crime has been committed?" These days you need to be a secret squirrel type to do so. In the not so distant future it's gonna be possible for just about any police agency to do. When the day comes that they can I think a strong argument can be made that the people will no longer be secure in their persons.
-
Law enforcement investigations have always been based on the correlating of information. There is a digital element today there wasn't in the past, but aside from the technology/forensic science, homicide investigations today are done much as they were when Jack the Ripper was stalking Whitechapel.
-
Haven't had a chance yet to read today's posts yet but a preliminary skim indicates they seem worthy of a good focused read. Indeed, the material therein could well belong on the Constitutional Law thread. In that regard I would note the 9th Amendment's "all rights not otherwise enumerated etc" and submit the proposition that privacy was/is such an obvious concept that our Founding Fathers saw no need to mention it any more than the right of self-defense. The analysis I saw proferred that privacy is limited to the 4th (which was the position held by Judge Bork until he was , , , borked) is one with which I disagree for the reasons I just gave.
If someone would like to move/continue this on the Constitutional Law thread we can continue it there. It IS a very important subject.
Anyway, here's this:
===============
The internet is spying on you
Every time you go online, sophisticated data miners are tracking your every move. What do they know about you?
How to fight back against data miners
How frequently am I followed online?
Constantly. Your computer leaves a unique digital trail every time you visit a website, post a comment on a blog, or add a photo to your Facebook wall. A growing number of companies follow that trail to assemble a profile of you and your affinities. These profiles can contain shocking levels of detail—including your age, income, shopping habits, health problems, sexual proclivities, and ZIP code—right down to the number of rooms in your house and the number of people in your family. Although trackers don’t identify their subjects by name, the data they compile is so extensive that “you can find out who an individual is without it,” says Maneesha Mithal of the Federal Trade Commission.
How does the technology work?
The moment you land on a website, it installs a unique electronic code on your hard drive. Owners of websites originally placed “cookies,” the simplest such codes, on computers for users’ convenience, in order to remember things like the contents of online shopping carts. But a cookie placed by one site can also serve as a tracking device that allows marketers to identify an individual computer and follow its path on every Web visit. It’s like a clerk who sells you a pair of jeans at one store, then trails you around the mall, recording every store you visit and every item of clothing you try on. “Beacons” are super-cookies that record even computer keystrokes and mouse movements, providing another layer of detail. “Flash cookies” are installed when a computer user activates Flash technology, such as a YouTube video, embedded on a site. They can also reinstall cookies that have been removed. Such “persistent cookies,” says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, make it “virtually impossible for users to go online without being tracked and profiled.”
Who’s doing the spying?
Marketers, advertisers, and those whose businesses depend on them. Most websites install their own cookies and beacons, both to make site navigation easier and to gather user information. (Wikipedia is a rare exception.) But third parties—advertisers and the networks that place online ads, such as Google and iAds—frequently pay site hosts to install their own tracking technology. Beacons are even sometimes planted without the knowledge of the host site. Comcast, for example, installed Flash cookies on computers visiting its website after it accepted Clearspring Technologies’ free software for displaying slide shows. Visitors who clicked on a slide show at Comcast.com wound up loading Clearspring’s Flash cookies onto their hard drives, which Comcast said it had never authorized.
How is personal data used?
It’s collected and sold by companies like Clearspring. Such information can be sold in large chunks—for example, an advertiser might pay $1 for 1,000 profiles of movie lovers—or in customized segments. An apparel retailer might buy access to 18-year-old female fans of the Twilight movie series who reside in the Sunbelt. “We can segment it all the way down to one person,” says Eric Porres of Lotame, which sells these profiles. Advertisers use the profiles to deliver individualized ads that follow users to every site they visit. Julia Preston, a 32-year-old software designer from Austin, recently saw how this works firsthand when she started seeing lots of Web ads for fertility treatments. She had recently researched uterine disorders online. “It’s unnerving,” she says.
Is all this snooping legal?
So far, yes. While an e-commerce site can’t sell to third parties the credit card numbers it acquires in the course of its business, the legality of various tracking technologies—and the sale of the personal profiles that result—has never been tested in court. Privacy advocates say that’s not because there aren’t abundant abuses, but because the law hasn’t kept pace with advancing technology. “The relevant laws,” says Lauren Weinstein of People for Internet Responsibility, an advocacy group, “are generally so weak—if they exist at all—that it’s difficult to file complaints.”
Can you avoid revealing yourself online?
Aside from abandoning the Internet altogether, there’s virtually no way to evade prying eyes. Take the case of Ashley Hayes-Beaty, who learned just how exposed she was when The Wall Street Journal shared what it had learned about her from a data miner. Hayes-Beaty’s computer use identified her as a 26-year-old female Nashville resident who counts The Princess Bride and 50 First Dates among her favorite movies, regularly watches Sex and the City, keeps current on entertainment news, and enjoys taking pop-culture quizzes. That litany, which advertisers can buy for about one-tenth of a cent, constitutes what Hayes-Beaty calls an “eerily precise” consumer profile. “I like to think I have some mystery left to me,” says Hayes-Beaty, “but apparently not.”
There are ways to minimize your exposure to data miners. One of the most effective is to disrupt profile-building by clearing your computer browser’s cache and deleting all cookies at least once a week. In addition, turning on the “private browsing” feature included in most popular Web browsers will block tracking technologies from installing themselves on your machine. For fees ranging from $9.95 to $10,000, companies like ReputationDefender can remove your personal information from up to 90 percent of commercial websites. But it’s basically impossible to eradicate personal information, such as property records and police files, from government databases. “There’s really no solution now, except abstinence” from the Internet, says Lt. Col. Greg Conti, a computer science professor at West Point. “And if you choose not to use online tools, you’re really not a member of the 21st century.”
-
U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.
Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.
The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.
James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications” and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralized design.
“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”
But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.
“We’re talking about lawfully authorized intercepts,” said Valerie E. Caproni, general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “We’re not talking expanding authority. We’re talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security.”
Investigators have been concerned for years that changing communications technology could damage their ability to conduct surveillance. In recent months, officials from the F.B.I., the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, the White House and other agencies have been meeting to develop a proposed solution.
There is not yet agreement on important elements, like how to word statutory language defining who counts as a communications service provider, according to several officials familiar with the deliberations.
But they want it to apply broadly, including to companies that operate from servers abroad, like Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry devices. In recent months, that company has come into conflict with the governments of Dubai and India over their inability to conduct surveillance of messages sent via its encrypted service.
In the United States, phone and broadband networks are already required to have interception capabilities, under a 1994 law called the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. It aimed to ensure that government surveillance abilities would remain intact during the evolution from a copper-wire phone system to digital networks and cellphones.
Often, investigators can intercept communications at a switch operated by the network company. But sometimes — like when the target uses a service that encrypts messages between his computer and its servers — they must instead serve the order on a service provider to get unscrambled versions.
Like phone companies, communication service providers are subject to wiretap orders. But the 1994 law does not apply to them. While some maintain interception capacities, others wait until they are served with orders to try to develop them.
The F.B.I.’s operational technologies division spent $9.75 million last year helping communication companies — including some subject to the 1994 law that had difficulties — do so. And its 2010 budget included $9 million for a “Going Dark Program” to bolster its electronic surveillance capabilities.
Beyond such costs, Ms. Caproni said, F.B.I. efforts to help retrofit services have a major shortcoming: the process can delay their ability to wiretap a suspect for months.
Moreover, some services encrypt messages between users, so that even the provider cannot unscramble them.
There is no public data about how often court-approved surveillance is frustrated because of a service’s technical design.
But as an example, one official said, an investigation into a drug cartel earlier this year was stymied because smugglers used peer-to-peer software, which is difficult to intercept because it is not routed through a central hub. Agents eventually installed surveillance equipment in a suspect’s office, but that tactic was “risky,” the official said, and the delay “prevented the interception of pertinent communications.”
Moreover, according to several other officials, after the failed Times Square bombing in May, investigators discovered that the suspect, Faisal Shahzad, had been communicating with a service that lacked prebuilt interception capacity. If he had aroused suspicion beforehand, there would have been a delay before he could have been wiretapped.
To counter such problems, officials are coalescing around several of the proposal’s likely requirements:
¶ Communications services that encrypt messages must have a way to unscramble them.
¶ Foreign-based providers that do business inside the United States must install a domestic office capable of performing intercepts.
¶ Developers of software that enables peer-to-peer communication must redesign their service to allow interception.
Providers that failed to comply would face fines or some other penalty. But the proposal is likely to direct companies to come up with their own way to meet the mandates. Writing any statute in “technologically neutral” terms would also help prevent it from becoming obsolete, officials said.
Even with such a law, some gaps could remain. It is not clear how it could compel compliance by overseas services that do no domestic business, or from a “freeware” application developed by volunteers.
In their battle with Research in Motion, countries like Dubai have sought leverage by threatening to block BlackBerry data from their networks. But Ms. Caproni said the F.B.I. did not support filtering the Internet in the United States.
Still, even a proposal that consists only of a legal mandate is likely to be controversial, said Michael A. Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who advises communications providers.
“It would be an enormous change for newly covered companies,” he said. “Implementation would be a huge technology and security headache, and the investigative burden and costs will shift to providers.”
Several privacy and technology advocates argued that requiring interception capabilities would create holes that would inevitably be exploited by hackers.
Steven M. Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor, pointed to an episode in Greece: In 2005, it was discovered that hackers had taken advantage of a legally mandated wiretap function to spy on top officials’ phones, including the prime minister’s.
“I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he said. “If they start building in all these back doors, they will be exploited.”
Susan Landau, a Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study fellow and former Sun Microsystems engineer, argued that the proposal would raise costly impediments to innovation by small startups.
“Every engineer who is developing the wiretap system is an engineer who is not building in greater security, more features, or getting the product out faster,” she said.
Moreover, providers of services featuring user-to-user encryption are likely to object to watering it down. Similarly, in the late 1990s, encryption makers fought off a proposal to require them to include a back door enabling wiretapping, arguing it would cripple their products in the global market.
But law enforcement officials rejected such arguments. They said including an interception capability from the start was less likely to inadvertently create security holes than retrofitting it after receiving a wiretap order.
They also noted that critics predicted that the 1994 law would impede cellphone innovation, but that technology continued to improve. And their envisioned decryption mandate is modest, they contended, because service providers — not the government — would hold the key.
“No one should be promising their customers that they will thumb their nose at a U.S. court order,” Ms. Caproni said. “They can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th
-
What? Domestic al qaeda cells could no longer be sure their Skype conference calls are secure? Outrageous!!!! :roll:
-
Yeah, and those technical mavens in federal law enforcement get to tell private sector businesses what kind of holes they have to build into their networks at their expense. Nothin' could go wrong there.
-
http://www.askcalea.net/
Question: What is the purpose of CALEA?
Answer:
The purpose of CALEA is to preserve the ability of law enforcement to conduct electronic surveillance in the face of rapid advances in telecommunications technology. Further details can be found at H.R. Rep. No. 103-827, 103d Cong., 2d Sess.(1994), reprinted in 1994 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3489
Question: Who must be CALEA-compliant?
Answer:
All telecommunications carriers as defined by Section 102(8) of CALEA. Basically, this includes all entities engaged in the transmission or switching of wire or electronic communications as a common carrier for hire.
Question: What is "call-identifying information?"
Answer:
Section 102(2) of CALEA defines call-identifying information as "dialing or signaling information that identifies the origin, direction, destination, or termination of each communication generated or received by a subscriber by means of any equipment, facility, or service of a telecommunications carrier."
Question: What is "call content?"
Answer:
Defined in 18 U.S.C. 2510(8) it is an intercept "when used with respect to any wire or electronic communications, includes any information concerning the substance, purport, or meaning of that communications."
Question: What is a "safe harbor" under CALEA?
Answer:
Section 107(a)(2) of CALEA contains a "safe harbor" provision, stating that "[a] telecommunications carrier shall be found to be in compliance with the assistance capability requirements under Section 103, and a manufacturer of telecommunications transmission or switching equipment or a provider of telecommunications support services shall be found to be in compliance with Section 106 if the carrier, manufacturer, or support service provider is in compliance with publicly available technical requirements or standards adopted by an industry association or standard-setting organization, or by the FCC under subsection (b), to meet the requirements of Section 103."
Question: What CALEA responsibilities do telecommunications equipment manufacturers have?
Answer:
Under CALEA, a manufacturer of telecommunications transmission or switching equipment and a provider of telecommunications support services shall, on a reasonably timely basis and at a reasonable charge, make available to the telecommunications carriers using its equipment, facilities, or services such features or modifications as are necessary to permit such carriers to comply with the assistance capability requirements and the capacity requirements.
The FBI has implemented a reimbursement strategy that will allow many telecommunications carriers to receive CALEA software at no charge for certain high priority switching platforms. Under nationwide right-to-use (RTU) license agreements, the Government pays for the development of CALEA software solutions for certain high priority switching platforms. This allows carriers to receive CALEA software at a nominal charge for equipment, facilities, or services installed or deployed now and in the future.
To date, the FBI has signed agreements with AG Communications Systems, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nortel Networks, and Siemens AG for technical solutions developed to meet the assistance capability requirements of CALEA. When considered in total, these agreements result in software solutions being available for the vast majority of law enforcement's priority, pre-January 1, 1995 switches.
Frequently Misunderstood Questions
On March 17, 2004, we published a press release regarding our joint petition.
Q: Does the petition for CALEA rulemaking propose to apply CALEA to all types of online communication, including instant messaging and visits to websites?
A: No. The petition proposes CALEA coverage of only broadband Internet access service and broadband telephony service. Other Internet-based services, including those classified as "information services" such as email and visits to websites, would not be covered.
Q: Does the petition propose extensive retooling of existing broadband networks that could impose significant costs?
A: No. The petition contends that CALEA should apply to certain broadband services but does not address the issue of what technical capabilities those broadband providers should deliver to law enforcement. CALEA already permits those service providers to fashion their own technical standards as they see fit. If law enforcement considers an industry technical standard deficient, it can seek to change the standard only by filing a special "deficiency" petition before the Commission. It is the FCC, not law enforcement, that decides whether any capabilities should be added to the standard. The FCC may refuse to order a change in a standard on many different grounds. For example, a capability may be rejected because it is too costly. Therefore CALEA already contains protections for industry against paying undue compliance costs.
Q: Did law enforcement ask the FCC to curtail its usual review process to implement the petition?
A: No. Law enforcement asked the FCC to give the proposed rulemaking expedited treatment. Such treatment is often requested and granted when urgent matters are brought to the FCC's attention. Some FCC rulemaking proceedings can take years to complete. Law enforcement believes expedited treatment is warranted in this case based on evidence that terrorists, criminals, and/or spies are already exploiting the networks of broadband communication providers to evade lawful electronic surveillance.
Q: Is Law enforcement trying to dictate how the Internet should be engineered to permit whatever level of surveillance law enforcement deems necessary?
A: No. Law enforcement does not seek the power to dictate how the Internet should be engineered or even to decide how broadband communications networks should be engineered. As explained above, CALEA already allocates those decisions to industry and any resulting capability disputes between industry and law enforcement are decided by the FCC. Moreover, the level of surveillance is not an issue raised in the petition, is not within the scope of CALEA, and is not decided by law enforcement. Based on a statute known as "Title III," before a law enforcement agent or officer is permitted to engage in lawful electronic surveillance, he or she must seek an appropriate court order from a judge or magistrate. Only if a judicial order is issued can the lawful surveillance take place, and the level of surveillance is prescribed by the order.
Q: Does the petition ignore the letter or spirit of CALEA's "information services" exemption by seeking to apply CALEA to such services?
A: No. The petition notes that CALEA contains a definition of "telecommunications carrier" that is different from and broader than the definition of that term in the Communications Act, which governs most FCC actions. The petition therefore asks the FCC to decide the scope of CALEA coverage based on the CALEA definition, not the Communications Act definition. As a result, some carriers classified as "information service" providers for purposes of the Communications Act would be simultaneously deemed "telecommunications carriers" for purposes of CALEA.
Q: Would the petition force carriers to decode data that might be encrypted?
A: No. The petition does not raise the issue of encryption. That issue is already addressed by CALEA. The statute states that if encryption is provided by a telecommunications carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication, it must decrypt the communications subject to an order for lawful interception. But if the encryption is provided by a subscriber or customer, the carrier is not responsible for decrypting the targeted communications.
-
And here's CATO's initial take. Hadn't heard that Greek and Chinese exploits are thought to have initiated through suveilance designed portals:
Designing an Insecure Internet
Posted by Julian Sanchez
If there were any doubt that the 90s are back in style, witness the Obama administration’s attempt to reignite the Crypto Wars by seeking legislation that would force Internet services to redesign their networks and products to provide a centralized mechanism for decrypting user communications. It cannot be stressed enough what a radical—and terrible—idea this is. I’ll be writing on this at greater length this week, but a few quick points.
First, while the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) already requires phone and broadband providers to build in interception capacity at their network hubs, this proposed requirement—at least going on the basis of the press description, since there’s no legislative text yet—is both broader and more drastic. It appears that it would apply to the whole panoply of online firms offering secure communication services, not just big carriers, imposing a greater relative burden. More importantly, it’s not just mandating that already-centralized systems install a government backdoor. Rather, if I understand it correctly, the proposal would insist on a centralized (and therefore less secure) architecture for secure communications, as opposed to an end-to-end model where encryption is handled client-side. In effect, the government is insisting on the right to make a macro-design choice between competing network models for thousands of companies.
Second, they are basically demanding that providers design their systems for breach. This is massively stupid from a security perspective. In the summer of 2004, still unknown hackers exploited surveillance software built in to one of Greece’s major cell networks to eavesdrop on high government officials, including the prime ministers. The recent hack of Google believed to originate in China may have used a law-enforcement portal to acquire information about dissidents. More recently, we learned of a Google engineer abusing his access to the system to spy on minors.
Third, this demand has implications beyond the United States. Networks designed for interception by U.S. authorities will also be more easily tapped by authoritarian governments looking to keep tabs on dissidents. And indeed, this proposal echoes demands from the likes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that their Blackberry system be redesigned for easier interception. By joining that chorus, the U.S. makes it more difficult for firms to resist similar demands from unlovely regimes.
Finally, this demand highlights how American law enforcement and intel agencies have been circumventing reporting requirements designed to provide information on this very problem. As the Crypto Wars of the 90s drew to a close, Congress amended the Wiretap Act, which creates strong procedural protections when the government wants to use intrusive electronic surveillance, to add a requirement that agencies report each instance in which they’d encountered encryption. The idea was to get an objective measure of how serious a problem this posed. The most recent report, however, cited only one instance in which encryption was encountered, out of 2,376 wiretap orders. Why, then, are we now being told encryption is a huge problem? Almost certainly because law enforcement and intelligence agencies aren’t using the Wiretap Act to intercept electronic communications—preferring, instead, to avail themselves of the far more lax standards—and spare reporting requirements—provided by the Stored Communications Act. It’s always easier to claim you need sweeping new powers from Congress when you’ve managed to do an end-run around the provisions Congress put in place to keep itself informed about how you’re using your existing powers, after all.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/designing-an-insecure-internet/
-
More importantly, it’s not just mandating that already-centralized systems install a government backdoor. Rather, if I understand it correctly, the proposal would insist on a centralized (and therefore less secure) architecture for secure communications, as opposed to an end-to-end model where encryption is handled client-side. In effect, the government is insisting on the right to make a macro-design choice between competing network models for thousands of companies.
**Uh, no, not according to the first article you posted.**
Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.
-
http://www.fcc.gov/pshs/services/calea/
CALEA COMPLIANCE - SOME BASIC INFORMATION
Pursuant to CALEA, industry is generally responsible for setting CALEA standards and solutions. Unless a party files a special petition pursuant to CALEA section 107(b), the Commission does not get formally involved with the compliance standards development process. CALEA also does not provide for Commission review of manufacturer-developed solutions. Entities subject to CALEA are responsible for reviewing the Commission's regulations and analyzing how this regulation applies per their specific network architecture.
A telecommunications carrier may comply with CALEA in different ways. First, the carrier may develop its own compliance solution for its unique network. Second, the carrier may purchase a compliance solution from vendors, including the manufacturers of the equipment it is using to provide service. Third, the carrier may purchase a compliance solution from a trusted third party (TPP). See CALEA Second Report and Order at para. 26. To contact TPPs, carriers may conduct an Internet search using such key words as "CALEA compliance" and "CALEA compliance help," or any combination that will yield a display of TPPs.
-
First, the carrier may develop its own compliance solution for its unique network.
Which impacts the little guys a lot more than the big, statist, companies.
What do you make of the claim that out of 2,376 wiretap orders, only one had to contend with encryption? Are we inventing a lot of infrastructure to deal with a rare occurrence?
-
If it's not much of an issue at the moment (If), how long do we wait after it's determined to be an issue?
Do you see any problem requiring a telecommunication provider to able to comply to a lawfully issued title III warrant?
-
Nope. Just don't like bureaucrats building in unsecure backdoors into stuff that have been exploited already. Actually expect the NSA already has this stuff well in hand, the question is now how far down the law enforcement food chain these capabilities creep.
-
If this legislation works as CALEA has in the past, it's not a matter of bureaucrats building a backdoor into systems, just requiring the telecom provider to be able to comply with a title III warrant.
-
In a landmark 1967 case, the Supreme Court ruled that evidence from a wiretap on a phone booth was obtained unconstitutionally. Despite the public nature of a phone booth, the tap violated the defendant’s privacy under the Fourth Amendment. “Wherever a man may be,” the court explained, “he is entitled to know that he will remain free from unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Fast forward to today, when courts are wrestling with the question of whether new technology requires them to think differently about what is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
In August, three judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (two conservatives, one liberal) ruled unanimously — and correctly — that police violated the Constitution when they hid a GPS device on a person’s car and tracked his every move without a valid warrant. That person, Antoine Jones, was convicted of conspiracy to distribute crack and cocaine based on the tracking of his Jeep for four weeks.
The way to define what was reasonable for Mr. Jones to regard as private, the court said, is by focusing on what was unreasonable for law enforcement to consider public. “The whole of one’s movements over the course of a month is not constructively exposed to the public,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg said, adding that it “reveals an intimate picture of the subject’s life that he expects no one to have — short perhaps of his spouse.”
Last week, the Justice Department asked the whole court to rehear the case. The government relies heavily on one precedent. In 1983, the Supreme Court said it was legal for police to use a beeper without a warrant to track a suspect on public roads. The argument was dubious: The suspect’s movements were visible and anyone could have gleaned what the police did without the beeper’s help, so he had no reasonable expectation of privacy.
The government now contends that replacing the beeper with a GPS makes no difference because surveillance of Mr. Jones was on public roads as well. Two other appeals courts in the past three years have accepted that argument. In one, the opinion was written by Richard Posner, among the most respected federal judges.
He got it wrong. Judge Ginsburg got it right: “The difference is not one of degree but of kind.” He also said that, in the Supreme Court case, the justices “distinguished between the limited information discovered by use of the beeper — movements during a discrete journey — and more comprehensive or sustained monitoring.” The justices left for another day whether 24/7 surveillance should be regulated by another legal principle.
That day is here. Digital technology raises questions about differences between cyberspace and the physical world, which most search-and-seizure laws deal with. In showing why a powerful advance in technology calls for significantly greater protection of privacy, the three-judge panel provided an important example of how the law can respond to new circumstances.
-
Tracking the movement of a crack dealer by law enforcement makes perfect sense... except for that small detail, 'without a warrant'.
Whatever the police reasons were, they needed to run it by a judge first, otherwise they could be tracking any one of us on suspicion rather than probable cause.
-
Ok, you are are a LEO tasked with counterterrorism duties. A friendly european law enforcement agency tips you to a resident of your city. They believe that the individual in question is running multiple AQ cells in both the US and europe. They either do not have or are not willing to share the evidence that makes them believe this. How do you get a warrant to place this person under surveillance?
-
We don't! We throw out the Bill of Rights and go all Jack Bauer on his a$$!
What did I win? :-D
-
Be sure to let me know when you come up with a valid argument.
-
**Oh look, a case that was initiated by a tip from the brits. No throwing out of the bill of rights or Jack Bauer antics required to make a case. I bet lots of surveillance by the FBI was involved, however.**
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Two Chicago Men Charged in Connection with Alleged Roles in Foreign Terror Plot That Focused on Targets in Denmark
Two Chicago men have been arrested on federal charges for their alleged roles in conspiracies to provide material support and/or to commit terrorist acts against overseas targets, including facilities and employees of a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005, federal law enforcement officials announced today. There was no imminent danger in the Chicago area, officials said, adding that the charges are unrelated to recent terror plot arrests in Boston, New York, Colorado, Texas and central Illinois.
The defendants charged in separate criminal complaints unsealed today in U.S. District Court in Chicago are David Coleman Headley, 49, and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, also known as Tahawar Rana, announced Patrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the FBI. The complaints remained under seal temporarily after the defendants’ arrests, with court approval, so as not to compromise further investigative activity.
Headley, a U.S. citizen who changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006 and resides primarily in Chicago, was arrested on Oct. 3, 2009, by the Chicago FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) at O’Hare International Airport before boarding a flight to Philadelphia, intending to travel on to Pakistan. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts involving murder and maiming outside the United States and one count of conspiracy to provide material support to that overseas terrorism conspiracy.
Rana, a native of Pakistan and citizen of Canada who also primarily resides in Chicago, was arrested on Oct. 18, 2009, at his home by federal agents. Rana is the owner of several businesses, including First World Immigration Services, which has offices on Devon Avenue in Chicago, as well as in New York and Toronto. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorism conspiracy that involved Headley and at least three other specific individuals in Pakistan.
Both men have been held in federal custody since each was arrested. If convicted, Headley faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for conspiracy to murder or maim persons abroad, while Headley and Rana each face a maximum of 15 years in prison for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism.
On Oct. 18, 2009, JTTF agents executed search warrants in connection with the investigation at four locations: Headley’s and Rana’s residences on the north side of Chicago, Rana’s immigration business in Chicago, and a farm he owns in Kinsman, Ill., approximately 80 miles southwest of Chicago, which is used to provide halal meat for Muslim customers, as well as a grocery store in Chicago.
According to both complaints, since at least late 2008 until Oct. 3, 2009, as part of the conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad, Headley allegedly identified and conducted surveillance of potential targets of a terrorist attack in Denmark on two separate trips to Denmark in January and July 2009, and reported and attempted to report on his efforts to other conspirators in Pakistan. As part of the conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism, Rana allegedly helped arrange Headley’s travels overseas and conceal their true nature and purpose to surveil potential terror targets overseas, and discussed potential targets for attack with Headley.
Headley allegedly reported and attempted to report on his overseas surveillance to other conspirators, according to the affidavits, including:
Ilyas Kashmiri, identified as the operational chief of the Azad Kashmir section of Harakat-ul Jihad Islami (HUJI), a Pakistani-based terrorist organization with links to al Qaeda. Kashmiri, who is presently believed to be in Waziristan in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) region in northwestern Pakistan, issued a statement this month that he was alive and working with al Qaeda;
"Individual A" (who is identified as Individual A in the Headley affidavit and as Individual B in the Rana affidavit), who is associated with Kashmiri, as well as with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), another Pakistani-based terrorist organization;
an individual identified as "Lashkar-e-Taiba Member A" (LeT Member A), who has substantial influence and responsibility within the organization and whose identity is known to the government.
"The public should be reassured that there was no imminent danger in the Chicago area. However, law enforcement has the duty to be vigilant to guard against not just those who would carry out attacks here on our soil but those who plot on our soil to help carry out violent attacks overseas. I wish to express my deep appreciation to the FBI agents and other members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force for their extremely hard work on this matter," said Mr. Fitzgerald.
"The criminal complaints unsealed today have exposed a serious plot against overseas targets by two Chicago-based men working with Pakistani-based terrorist organizations. Information developed during this investigation was shared with our foreign partners as we worked together to mitigate these threats. This case is a reminder that the threat posed by international terrorist organizations is global in nature and requires constant vigilance at home and abroad," said David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.
"This investigation demonstrates the well-established relationships that we have with our law enforcement partners, both foreign and domestic. We work closely with state, local and federal law enforcement agencies in the United States, as well as with our overseas partners, to identify and disrupt threats here and abroad," said Mr. Grant.
According to the affidavits in both cases, Headley at times has claimed to be a consultant with or representative of Rana’s business, First World Immigration Services, but appears to perform little if any actual work for the business. In addition, Headley’s apartment in Chicago is leased to an individual who is deceased. Despite his apparent lack of financial resources and substantial employment, Headley has traveled extensively since the second half of 2008, including multiple trips to Pakistan and various countries in Europe. Postings to an internet group for graduates of a military school in the Pakistani town of Hasan Abdal (a group that refers to itself as "abdalians"), reflect that both Rana and Headley have participated in the group and referred to their attendance at that school.
The Denmark Project
Beginning in late 2008, Headley corresponded extensively with Individual A and LeT Member A regarding what they referred to in coded communications as the "Mickey Mouse Project," "mmp," and "the northern project," according to the affidavit. The Mickey Mouse Project allegedly involved planning for one or more attacks at facilities and employees of Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper that in 2005 published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, to which many Muslims took great offense. In October 2008, Headley allegedly posted a message to the "abdalians" internet discussion group stating that "I feel disposed towards violence for the offending parties," referring to the Danish cartoonists and others who he identified "as making fun of Islam."
Using coded language, Rana, Headley, Individual A and LeT Member A allegedly have referred to this plot, as well as discussions of other targets, as "investments," "projects," "business," and "action," and have described their hopes for success both in terms of receiving religious awards, as well as getting "rich," "richer," and making "profit." Between August 2008 and Dec. 7, 2008, Headley sent multiple email messages from internet addresses located in Karachi and Lahore in Pakistan, the charges allege. On Dec. 7, 2008, just before traveling from Pakistan to the United States that same day, Headley alleged used one of multiple email accounts to store a detailed list of items for himself, which he titled "Mickey Mouse." Included on the list (contained in the affidavits) were the following items:
Route Design (train, bus, air)
Cross (Cover Authenticator)
Trade? Immigration?
Ad? (Lost Luggage) (Business) (Entry?)
Kings Square (French Embassy)
...
Counter surveillance (magic eye)
...
Security (armed)?
In January 2009, Headley traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark, and Rana allegedly arranged portions of his travel. During the trip, Headley allegedly visited two different offices of the Jyllands-Posten — in Copenhagen and Arhus, Denmark. The Copenhagen office is located in Kings Square near the French Embassy. Headley falsely told Jyllands-Posten employees that he was visiting on behalf of First World Immigration Services, which he said was considering opening offices in Denmark and might be interested in advertising the business in the newspaper. While in Denmark, Headley instructed Rana to be alert for an email from a Jyllands-Posten sales representative, and to ask First World’s Toronto and New York offices to "remember me," in case a newspaper representative called. According to the complaints, Rana corresponded from Chicago with a representative of the Jyllands-Posten by email in which he pretended to be Headley.
After visiting Denmark, Headley traveled to Pakistan to meet with Individual A. During this visit, Headley traveled with Individual A to Pakistan’s FATA region and met with Kashmiri. Before returning to Chicago in June 2009, Headley sent his will to Rana and Rana responded by sending a coded message establishing a new email account, the complaint alleges.
In July and August 2009, Headley exchanged a series of emails with LeT Member A, including an exchange in which Headley asked if the Denmark project was on hold, and whether a visit to India that LeT Member A had asked him to undertake was for the purpose of surveilling targets for a new terrorist attack. These emails reflect that LeT Member A was placing a higher priority on using Headley to assist in planning a new attack in India than on completing the planned attack in Denmark. After this time, Headley and Individual A allegedly continued focusing on the plan with Kashmiri to attack the newspaper, rather than working with LeT, the complaint alleges.
In late July 2009, Headley traveled again to Copenhagen and to other locations in Europe, and Rana again arranged portions of his travel. When Headley returned to the United States, he falsely told border inspectors that he was traveling on business as a representative of First World Immigration, although his luggage contained no papers or other documents relating to First World.
After returning to Chicago in August 2009, Headley allegedly used coded language to repeatedly inquire if Individual A had been in touch with Kashmiri regarding planning for the attack, and expressing concern that Individual A’s communications with Kashmiri had been cut off. In early September 2009, Headley and Rana took a lengthy car ride during which they discussed the activities of the other individuals, including past terrorist acts, and Headley discussed with Rana five actions involving targets that expressly included "Denmark." In conversations with Rana and Individual A in August and September 2009, Headley indicated that if the "doctor" (alleged to be a reference to Kashmiri) and his people were unable to assist, then Headley would perform the planned operation himself.
In September 2009, after initial press reports indicated that Kashmiri had been killed in a drone attack in Pakistan, Headley and Individual A allegedly had a series of coded conversations in which they discussed the reports of Kashmiri’s death and what it meant for the projects they were planning. Individual A sought to reassure and encourage Headley, telling him, among other things, that "[t]his is business sir; these types of things happen." On Sept. 20, 2009, Headley allegedly told a family member words to the effect that he had spoken to Rana and they agreed that "business must go on."
In a Sept. 21, 2009, telephone conversation, Individual A indicated to Headley that Kashmiri was alive and "doing well." In a subsequent conversation on Sept. 30, 2009, Individual A again assured Headley that Kashmiri, whom he referred to as "Pir Sahib," was "absolutely all right" and had not gotten "married," which was code for being killed. Headley asked Individual A if it was possible to now have a meeting with Kashmiri and Individual A responded that Kashmiri "just today, was asking about you" (Headley).
According to the affidavit, Headley stated in conversations last month that he intended to travel to Pakistan in early October to meet with Individual A and Kashmiri, and he was arrested on Oct. 3 as he prepared to board a flight from Chicago to Philadelphia, intending to travel on to Pakistan. During a search of Headley’s luggage, a memory stick was recovered that contained approximately 10 short videos of Copenhagen, including video focused on the Jyllands-Posten building in King’s Square taken both during the day and night, as well as a nearby Danish military barracks and the exterior and interior of Copenhagen’s central train station, consistent with the checklist he stored which mentioned "route design." In addition, Headley had an airline reservation, allegedly made by Rana, to fly from Atlanta to Copenhagen on Oct. 29, 2009.
The investigation is continuing and is being conducted by the Chicago FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, with particular assistance from the Chicago Police Department, the Illinois State Police and the Department of Homeland Security.
The prosecution is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Daniel Collins and Vicki Peters from the Northern District of Illinois, with assistance from the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
The public is reminded that a criminal complaint contains mere allegations that are not evidence of guilt. The defendants are presumed innocent and are entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
-
**See, here is how it works: Law enforcement gets a tip to criminal activity. This tip is NOT probable cause. It may be valid, it may not. So you watch the suspects, looking for evidence of a crime or crimes. If you find sufficient evidence of a crime to reach the level of probable cause, you can THEN get search/arrest warrants.**
http://www.times-herald.com/Local/Four-arrested--money-cash-vehicles-guns-seized-during-drug-raid-1094161
Four arrested; money, cash, vehicles, guns seized during drug raid
By Alex McRae
The Times-Herald
Weeks of undercover surveillance paid off Sunday afternoon when a raid on a Highway 16 East residence by members of the Coweta Crime Suppression Unit resulted in four drug-related arrests and the seizure of weapons, vehicles, cash and methamphetamine valued at $300,000, according to Maj. James Yarbrough of the Coweta County Sheriff's Office.
"We've been watching these suspects for a while," Yarbrough said, "Sunday afternoon it finally paid off. We're glad to get these drugs off the street."
Members of the Crime Suppression Unit had been watching the residence at 3395 Highway 16 E. in Sharpsburg for more than two months, according to Sgt. Pat Lyons of the CSU.
Three individuals resided at the home: Charles Robert Stroup, 46; Stroup's daughter, Kassandra Lee Stroup, 23; and Karen Lanell Cary, 37, described as Charles Stroup's girlfriend.
The surveillance began after authorities received an anonymous tip that led them to believe drug-related activities were taking place. Heavier than normal vehicle traffic was observed during the surveillance, and CSU officers were able to get a search warrant issued for probable cause before Sunday's bust and seizure.
-
Be sure to let me know when you come up with a valid argument.
Wow, a valid argument for respecting the Bill of Rights as envisioned by the Constitution's Framers. Hmm, I'll have to think on that.
-
Please point out the part of the constitution that forbids police from surveilling suspects to determine if there is evidence of a crime.
-
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Van Clark SHERMAN, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 92-30067.
7
C. The district court admitted a videotape of the drug transaction which occurred on a mountain pass near Helena, Montana. Although Sherman wasn't present at the transaction, and therefore wasn't featured in the tape, he argues the surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment and the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986 (Title I). Sherman's Title I claim fails, because Title I doesn't regulate silent domestic video surveillance. United States v. Koyomejian, 970 F.2d 536, 540-41 (9th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 113 S.Ct. 617 (1992). Such surveillance is, however, subject to the dictates of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 541.
8
Although the parties frame the question as Sherman's ability to assert the privacy rights of his coconspirators who appear in the videotape, we don't decide the standing issue because we conclude none of them had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The transaction took place in plain view in a public place along a highway. Everything that was captured by the camera could just as easily have been seen by a person hiding in the trees where the camera was located. "Videotaping of suspects in public places ... does not violate the fourth amendment; the police may record what they normally may view with the naked eye." United States v. Taketa, 923 F.2d 665, 677 (9th Cir.1991); cf. United States v. Broadhurst, 805 F.2d 849, 855-56 (9th Cir.1986) (no reasonable expectation of privacy in translucent greenhouse, because activities are observable by planes and helicopters).
-
UNITED STATES, Petitioner
v.
Leroy Carlton KNOTTS.
No. 81-1802.
Argued Dec. 6, 1982.
Decided March 2, 1983.
Having reason to believe that one Armstrong was purchasing chloroform to be used in the manufacture of illicit drugs, Minnesota law enforcement officers arranged with the seller to place a "beeper" (a radio transmitter) inside a chloroform container that was sold to Armstrong. Officers then followed the car in which the chloroform was placed, maintaining contact by using both visual surveillance and a monitor which received the beeper signals, and ultimately tracing the chloroform, by beeper monitoring alone, to respondent's secluded cabin in Wisconsin. Following three days of intermittent visual surveillance of the cabin, officers secured a search warrant and discovered the chloroform container, and a drug laboratory in the cabin, including chemicals and formulas for producing amphetamine. After his motion to suppress evidence based on the warrantless monitoring of the beeper was denied, respondent was convicted in Federal District Court for conspiring to manufacture controlled substances in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the monitoring of the beeper was prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.
Held: Monitoring the beeper signals did not invade any legitimate expectation of privacy on respondent's part, and thus there was neither a "search" nor a "seizure" within the contemplation of the Fourth Amendment. The beeper surveillance amounted principally to following an automobile on public streets and highways. A person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements. While respondent had the traditional expectation of privacy within a dwelling place insofar as his cabin was concerned, such expectation of privacy would not have extended to the visual observation from public places of the automobile arriving on his premises after leaving a public highway, or to movements of objects such as the chloroform container outside the cabin. The fact that the officers relied not only on visual surveillance, but on the use of the beeper, does not alter the situation. Nothing in the Fourth Amendment prohibited the police from augmenting their sensory faculties with such enhancement as science and technology afforded them in this case. There is no indication that the beeper was used in any way to reveal information as to the movement of the chloroform container within the cabin, or in any way that would not have been visible to the naked eye from outside the cabin. Pp. 280-285.
-
Going back a couple of steps in this argument... I wrote regarding the placing of a GPS device on a crack dealer that they should get a warrant, with probable cause, "otherwise they could be tracking any one of us on a suspicion... "
GM replied with a question relating to counter-terrorism. But I am with GM on that. Whether by Patriot Act or new legislation if needed, I support going further to prevent an act like blowing up a city, than we would under criminal law or defendant rights. The loophole in the 4th is the word "unreasonable" searches and seizures. I posted previously that if I had dialed by accident or inadvertently bumped into one of bin Laden's henchmen I would expect and welcome the idea that some federal surveillance might be on me until my good name and the misunderstanding got cleared up.
Preventing a crack deal from taking place doesn't rise to that level. Probable cause seems like a fitting test to authorize a hidden device planted on the subject of a tip or suspicion, as you would need to enter their home.
Reading the US v. Knotts appeal at http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F2/662/515/416444/ I found: "On February 28, 1980, Minnesota agents delivered to the Hawkins Chemical Company a can of chloroform in which a beeper had been placed with the company's consent." The authorities were following a product they corrupted with permission, as it changed hands a couple of times to a suspected illegal use, not directly tracking a person under suspicion. I'm not sure how that that affected the decision but 'with the company's consent' seemed to be a relevant point in the facts.
US v. Knotts is supportive of GM's argument to a point but I can't say I agree with the decision if it truly means the right to plant a GPS tracking device on a citizen without probable cause.
I wonder how a beeper of 1980, presumably a short range device of limited accuracy, compared with "using binoculars to enhance your field of vision" is analogous to planting a GPS device for satellite and computer based tracking indefinitely, based on (any?) 'reason to believe', short of probable cause. Assume I am found to be innocent, who owns the device hidden on me, do they sneak in again and take it back, inform me I am no longer under suspicion, or leave it on me for others to track me? Does it contain metal and go off when I enter the airport or government center? Did I have a reasonable expectation of that? Or will they use the GPS that was required to be implanted in my phone for (reasonable expectation of) 911 services only.
Likewise with On-Star. The listening device is already planted in the vehicle and it transmits over public airwaves. The courts I believe require a warrant issued before the provider will switch on the listening capability for law enforcement. Even in all my attempts to be law abiding, I think still I will stay away from that technology.
-
Doug,
The relevant aspects of the caselaw that I posted are that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public areas. Just as a cat can look at a king, so can a cop. Using technological devices to assist in viewing the subject in public areas is no different than an agency like the FBI using teams of surveillance specialists and aircraft to track a suspect's movements through public spaces.
-
As stated repeatedly, I have no problem with "retail" policing, that is policing where probable cause goes before a judge, a warrant is issued, terms abided by, and so on. What I object to is wholesale privacy invasions such as tracking locational data, data mining, camera surveillance, etc. where harvested data is put together to establish probable cause rather than some prerequisite act being required to enable the invasions of privacy outlined above.
As to the scenario that's lead to this thread, I expect you are acquainted with instances where information provided by a snitch has proved to be false; your pal Radley Balko has documented a lot of instances where incorrect or overstated drug "tips" have lead to shooting injuries and deaths. Information, moreover, can also be wrong with no malevolent intent involved. It really ought to take more that a few whispers to subject an American citizen to the kinds of scrutiny that can be unleashed these days, and it scares me greatly that the closeted Marxists at the helm today have access to surveillance tools that have been shown to have been casually applied by others.
-
As stated repeatedly, I have no problem with "retail" policing, that is policing where probable cause goes before a judge, a warrant is issued, terms abided by, and so on. What I object to is wholesale privacy invasions such as tracking locational data, data mining, camera surveillance, etc. where harvested data is put together to establish probable cause rather than some prerequisite act being required to enable the invasions of privacy outlined above.
**Crimes, especially ongoing criminal conspiracies are often covertly structured to avoid scrutiny. By your standard, unless the mafia is leaving a body in your front yard, they should be ignored by law enforcement. Right?**
As to the scenario that's lead to this thread, I expect you are acquainted with instances where information provided by a snitch has proved to be false;
**Yes, which is why you INVESTIGATE any allegations made of criminal acts. This is why you are required to corroborate the information given by an informant and seek evidence of criminal acts to be presented to a judge to obtain a search/arrest warrant.**
your pal Radley Balko has documented **You mean distorted/exaggerated/falsified**
a lot of instances where incorrect or overstated drug "tips" have lead to shooting injuries and deaths. Information, moreover, can also be wrong with no malevolent intent involved.
**Again, this is why you INVESTIGATE. People do supply incorrect information to police, sometimes with ill intent, sometimes by honest error. Either way, as as a LEO, you are morally/legally/ethically required to perform an investigation in a fair and impartial manner, which will ultimately be strictly scrutinized by a judge and jury.**
It really ought to take more that a few whispers to subject an American citizen to the kinds of scrutiny that can be unleashed these days
**It does. People that knowingly provide false information to law enforcement are usually criminally charged themselves. Major case investigations are costly in time, money and resources and all these are in especially short supply these days. They aren't undertaken lightly, and certainly not without corroboration of the initial complaint.**
, and it scares me greatly that the closeted Marxists at the helm today have access to surveillance tools that have been shown to have been casually applied by others.
-
**Crimes, especially ongoing criminal conspiracies are often covertly structured to avoid scrutiny. By your standard, unless the mafia is leaving a body in your front yard, they should be ignored by law enforcement. Right?**
That's silly and you ought to know it. My concern is with wholesale invasions of privacy that hope to net criminals or information about their crimes when filtering through all the data. There is no way of knowing what is scooped up by wholesale operations--as I keep pointing out--won't be used inappropriately down the line. Despots have a long history of doing just that.
**Crimes, especially ongoing criminal conspiracies are often covertly structured to avoid scrutiny. By your standard, unless the mafia is leaving a body in your front yard, they should be ignored by law enforcement. Right?**
Yet one doesn't have to look too hard to find instances where investigated information leads to an incorrect door being kicked in.
**You mean distorted/exaggerated/falsified**
Others disagree. List members are invited to make up their own minds viewing the data shown here: http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
**Again, this is why you INVESTIGATE. People do supply incorrect information to police, sometimes with ill intent, sometimes by honest error. Either way, as as a LEO, you are morally/legally/ethically required to perform an investigation in a fair and impartial manner, which will ultimately be strictly scrutinized by a judge and jury.**
Yet as the map above attests, investigations lead to bad results. Or don't municipalities regularly pay out for wrongful deaths and injuries resulting from police activity?
I don't think we will ever resolve this disagreement between us GM, so I'm not sure how much more energy I'll put in to trying. You ultimately think that political administrations and the LEOs they hire can be trusted with fairly easy access to broad tools that are incredibly invasive, while I can't find a time in history where that kind of power wasn't grossly misused on a wholesale level. I hope you are right, and fear that I am.
-
You can't un-invent technology. If a government is oppressive, exactly how will some law or policy regarding the use of technology stop it from doing so?
Yet one doesn't have to look too hard to find instances where investigated information leads to an incorrect door being kicked in.
And there are civil and criminal liabilities related to the incorrect door being kicked in. Aside from the structural disincentives already present, what else would you do? To have a rule of law, laws must be enforced.
Others disagree. List members are invited to make up their own minds viewing the data shown here: http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
Note that the website you link to is the creation of Radley Balko, who will not let the truth get in the way of his anti-law enforcement agenda.
Or don't municipalities regularly pay out for wrongful deaths and injuries resulting from police activity?
In our litigious society, it's often the strategy to pay to settle suits rather than litigate them, no matter how much the suit might lack merit.
-
GM, BBG:
Although your conversation may be without resolution, for me it most certainly has merit and I hope the two of you will continue. There is much for the rest of us to learn from it.
The Adventure continues!
Marc
-
http://patterico.com/2009/07/29/balko-utterly-demolishes-a-few-arguments-that-jack-dunphy-and-i-never-made/
Oh look, Radley Balko not letting the truth get in the way of his agenda. Shocking.
-
You can't un-invent technology. If a government is oppressive, exactly how will some law or policy regarding the use of technology stop it from doing so?
Straw man as I'm not arguing for that. Rather I'm arguing that invasive technologies only be applied in an accountable, retail manner rather than in a poorly accountable wholesale manner. We don't know what laundry the NSA sifts through. We do know the FBI is applying the Patriot Act in a manner that most citizens and most assuredly this nation's founders would take issue with. This trend is one worth resisting.
And there are civil and criminal liabilities related to the incorrect door being kicked in. Aside from the structural disincentives already present, what else would you do? To have a rule of law, laws must be enforced.
The argument grows circular here. You posit robust surveillance tools are required by law enforcement. I rejoin that these tools are ones that could be easily misused. You reply that rigorous rules and oversight prevent that from occurring. I bring up instances where that was not the case. You want to know what I'd suggest instead. I respond that strict accountability, retail rather than wholesale use, and a strong civil libertarian ethic would greatly reduce the chance of misuse. Alas, a strong civil libertarian ethic prevents police from using all the tools in the box when they want to and the circle starts again.
In our litigious society, it's often the strategy to pay to settle suits rather than litigate them, no matter how much the suit might lack merit.
Or stonewall when plenty of merit is there. I've already mentioned the Maryland mayor who was mistakenly raided, his dogs shot, while his head, his wife's and his mother's got kneeled on. That police chief is still swearing up and down that he'd make the same decisions if the same set of circumstances presented themselves today. Fool. Then there is a case in Sunrise, Florida where a police department that sounds pretty shady by several accounts I've read shot and killed a guy who had just fallen asleep after his restaurant shift. A small amount of marijuana was recovered, the informant he made the dead guy sound like a big dealer sounds pretty shady, while discovery has been thwarted at every turn. But hey, we live in the day of Google; click on one of the dots on the map then sniff around for yourself. Bet it wont take too long for most list member to find a case that makes them shake their head in disgust.
Oh look, Radley Balko not letting the truth get in the way of his agenda. Shocking.
Wow, and peeps who warble at each other on the internets disagree when quoting the other. Will wonders never cease?
-
The reason we know that some FBI agents haven't complied with the required documentation in some cases? Because the DOJ OIG investigated and published it's findings. I'm pretty sure that's what you would call oversight.
Exactly what surveillance tools are you objecting to?
The FBI works lots of public corruption cases. If there are indications of corrupt law enforcement agencies, they often get lots of attention from the feds. The NOPD springs to mind as an example.
Radley Balko uses inflammitory press clippings in the same way gun control groups do. Ohhhh, that gun is an "assault rifle" because it has a flash hider and folding stock! Oh, that Mini-14 is ok because it has a wooden stock. There is no legal difference between a LEO in a class b uniform, BDUs and external vest or "soft clothes". Graham v. Connor is still the legal standard for the use of force, no matter what a LEO is wearing or what use of force tools are used.
-
Like Crafty expressed, I am enjoying the contention (in a sort of painful way) between our rights to be left alone and our rights to have crime and corruption rooted out as necessary.
I am thankful for a couple of stings the FBI did within Minneapolis City Hall a few years back that shook up some of the corruption that festers when you have single party rule. I am thankful for 19 al Qaida related arrests they made before I had to do with any of these people on a tenant application, though I know none of the facts so far. I am thankful the IRS, after a couple of swings at me, determined that I am mostly a law abiding citizen and definitely a small fish unworthy of very much of their time. They can be far more abusive than local police or FBI IMO. I am thankful that my own small town on the outskirts of the metro has never had a rape, murder, abduction or armed robbery that i know of. Leaves our fraction of a LEO very free to observe lumens from taillights and important matters like that.
Most of what is wrong in this country has to do with excessive laws, not excessive enforcement. Little things like saying the houses have to be the same height and the same distance from the street piss me off more than current drug dealer and murder investigation techniques.
Every new law passed and every GPS bug planted, judge or no judge, should be with the understanding that most of us are innocent and want to be left alone.
-
I can tell you that as someone that has spent the vast majority of my adult life working in some aspect of the criminal justice system, the vast majority of men and women in law enforcement are good people who go out to do the right thing for the right reasons.
-
Doug,
A lot of seriously bad people get arrested as the result of traffic stops for very minor traffic offenses. If you look at the stats for wanted felons arrested every year, state troopers tend to have the highest rates. Not because of special units that chase wanted felons, but sheer numbers of traffic stops. The more contacts, the better your odds of grabbing someone who really needs to go into custody. Dirtbags tend to not maintain their cars, stolen vehicles often have certain tell-tale signs as well. So living in a place where the local cops do lots of traffic tends to deter the criminal element from that area.
-
http://americansecurityproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Foiled-Plots.pdf
Key Findings
There is no silver bullet for thwarting terrorist attacks. Few of the terror plots thwarted after 9/11 were disrupted using a single, clearly identifiable method. Many of the plots were discovered through a combination of happenstance, allowing authorities to take advantage of what were, in essence, lucky breaks; diligent police work; foreign law enforcement cooperation; civilian-provided intelligence; and other means, none of which can be clearly identified as having been the most critical to thwarting an attack. Since it is difficult to determine objectively what has prevented terrorist attacks since 9/11, attempts to state definitively which piece of information or counterterrorism measure led to the disruption of a given terrorist network or plot must be treated with a degree of skepticism.
Post-9/11 counterterrorism measures—including the PATRIOT Act and amended FISA surveillance provisions, unlawful combatant designations, indefinite detentions, and the use of torture techniques—have been instrumental in thwarting attacks in only a small number of cases. There has been considerable speculation that post-9/11 counterterrorism provisions have been instrumental in preventing many or all of the terrorist attacks thwarted since 9/11.3 This report finds,
however, that the law enforcement techniques, detention and interrogation procedures, and legislative measures adopted after 9/11 demonstrably contributed to thwarting attacks in only five cases, or less than one-sixth of the total number of foiled attacks. The fact that intelligence and law enforcement officials often closely guard specific details of counterterrorism investigations makes it impossible to definitively claim that the use of techniques and legal provisions enacted after 9/11 has not contributed significantly to a larger number of post-9/11 counterterrorism successes. It is also critical to note, however, that there has been little clear evidence demonstrating that they have. In March 2009, for example, FBI director Robert Mueller stated that roving wiretaps had been obtained 147 times after 9/11.4 However, authorities identified roving wiretaps as having been used to disrupt only one terrorist plot.
Counterterrorism investigations leading to thwarted attacks have drawn heavily on traditional law enforcement techniques. A plurality of the post-9/11 terrorist plots were disrupted using traditional law enforcement techniques—specifically physical surveillance, undercover agents, and confidential informants—to obtain information on terror suspects and their attack plans. Though in some cases these techniques have been modified to take into account new developments in communication technology (e.g., monitoring internet chat rooms and jihadist websites), the techniques employed in the majority of thwarted attacks have been in keeping with those used in criminal investigations before 9/11.
Citizens’ vigilance and luck have played a fairly significant role in thwarting attacks. In approximately 21% of the cases examined, civilians’ proactive involvement (either through direct action or provision of intelligence) and simple happenstance that worked to the authorities’ advantage were significant factors in plots being discovered or disrupted. This does not suggest that direct or indirect civilian action can or should be relied upon as a means of thwarting attacks. Nor does it imply that successful counterterrorism is primarily a matter of luck. It does, however, underscore the complex range of factors and circumstances that contribute to preventing attacks and the danger inherent in uncritically reducing counterterrorism successes to an explicit validation of any one policy or tool.
International cooperation remains vital. In several cases foreign intelligence and law enforcement cooperation—including the provision of intelligence and making arrests—was instrumental in dismantling terror plots. Though this is hardly a new phenomenon, Umar Farouk Abdumutallab’s use of international transfer points to reach his final attack site highlights the increasing importance of international cooperation when terrorist conspirators live, plan, and operate in multiple international jurisdictions where the United States might have a limited presence or reach. Cooperation has also become especially important in light of the fact that terrorists increasingly conspire to attack targets in the United States and abroad simultaneously, as with the attempted liquid explosives attack and Dhiren Barot’s multiple international plots. This trend underscores the importance of making real-time communication and deconfliction of national and agency priorities paramount.
-
http://www.fletc.gov/training/programs/legal-division/podcasts/hot-issues-podcasts/hot-issues-transcripts/gps-tracking-transcript.html
Miller: How else might GPS be help to a law enforcement officer? I mean, could they track people with it?
Hodges: Yeah, and I think that’s the thrusts of where we want to go. And here’s how tracking works. Officers can take a GPS receiver and covertly attach it to a vehicle. The receiver is set up to at particular, pre-set, pre-determined intervals. It calculates its location and remembers it. That data is recorded and then later on the officers can download that information from the device, put it on a computer and display when and where the vehicle was. It can even show a vehicles particular route, speed and the life.
More sophisticated installations are going to have equipment that will immediately translate the location through a cell phone on another wireless connection and officers can stand back and live track the vehicle either through a notebook computer that receives a cell phone signal or I’ve seen set ups where officers back in their offices or maybe even cross country can all track the same vehicle at the same time and we call that live tracking.
Miller: It’s got to have some limitations; it can’t be all perfect.
Hodges: Nothings perfect and there are both technical and some legal implications. Now obviously the departments are going to have to obtain the equipment and I recommend that they get proper training from the manufacture on how to use it. There’s also a course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center called the Covert Electronic Tracking Program and you can go to the same FLETC website without the legal part and you can sign up for that course or get information about it.
Another limitation with GPS is that current technology requires that satellite antenna or the GPS satellite antenna be exposed, so it’s able to see the sky. If it can’t see the sky, it can’t get a satellite signal. If the receiver, or more accurately, if the receiver antenna’s at a place where it can’t do that like a parking garage or a heavily forested area then GPS won’t work or if it does it’s going to be severally limited.
Miller: There’s also there’s got to be some legal implications.
Hodges: There always is. It’s our friend the 4th Amendment that comes back again. It’s all about REP, reasonable expectations of privacy. I think the easiest way to look at this is to have somebody who wants to do a GPS installation and use it for tracking, that officer should ask himself or herself three questions. First, do I need to intrude into a REP area to get to the vehicle to install the equipment? Second question is do I need to intrude into the vehicle’s REP to install the equipment? And the third question is will the officer be tracking a vehicle as it moves into a REP area? So, if the answer to any of those three questions is yes, then we are going to need a warrant. If the answer to all three of those questions is no, then we don’t need a warrant.
Before we get too far into the details, let me say that this Podcast deals with federal law. State law can differ and some of the differences are outlined in that webpage article that we talked about earlier.
Miller: Well let’s take a look at that first question, location of the vehicle at the time of the installation. Tell me a little bit about that.
Hodges: Well you and Jenna Solari have covered this already in your 4th Amendment Podcast series. And the way it goes is this; if the vehicle is located in an area where there’s REP, such as on a curtilage, the officers are going to need a warrant to get into the REP area to install the equipment. On the other hand, if the vehicle is parked out on a public road, a parking garage or even a road in a gated community there is no intrusion into REP to get that to the um vehicle.
I would add that most federal cases hold that there is no REP in ordinary driveways leading up to a residence, but I would certainly recommend an officers speak to their AUSA before doing an warrant less installation on a vehicle that’s parked in an owners driveway.
Miller: Okay, let’s look at that second question, now REP on the vehicle.
Hodges: Right. In some cases all the GPS tracking equipment can be installed on the exterior of the vehicle and we’re not having to intrude in the vehicle’s interior or the trunk or taping into the vehicle’s wiring. In that case there is no intrusion into a REP area because there’s no REP as to the exterior of a vehicle. If officers do have to go into interior of the vehicle or the trunk or tap into the vehicle’s wiring, they we are going to have an intrusion into a REP area and then a warrant is going to be required.
Miller: Now you told me that you can use this GPS system to actually track the vehicle. Correct?
Hodges: That’s right.
Miller: Talk to me about this, this third issue location of the vehicle in terms of where it might move.
Hodges: Now, federal law does not require a warrant to GPS monitor a vehicle as it moves over public roads and highways. If you are going to go tracking in public roads or highways I should say if you’re going to track in a REP area then a warrant is required. Usually this last factor isn’t very important in GPS tracking and that’s because GPS doesn’t work indoors and most REP areas for a vehicle is going to be in some covered area like a garage or a large warehouse complex. If you get into RF tracking that would be a different matter but we’re not talking about RF tracking today, we’re just talking about GPS.
Miller: Okay, you covered a lot of information. Can you, can you review these three questions please?
Hodges: Yep, I think that’s a good idea. First question is do I need to intrude into a REP area to get to the vehicle to install the equipment? Second, do I need to intrude into the vehicle’s REP to install the equipment; and third, will the officer be tracking the vehicle as it moves into a REP area? And again the math on this is pretty simple. If the answer to all of the questions is no, then under federal law I don’t need a warrant. If the answer to any of the three questions is yes, then I am going to going to need a warrant.
Miller: Hey, does Title III wire taps have anything to do with this tracking device?
Hodges: Tim, it doesn’t. In fact, Title III specifically excludes tracking devices from its coverage.
-
GM, This article is very helpful to understand their thinking and the criteria they use. It answers one of my questions regarding the planting of the device. I disagree slightly with their thinking.
If my private car is parked in a public location or close to the street in my driveway and someone without permission is seen climbing under it to attach something to it, pipe bomb, etc, my reasonable expectation is that if law enforcement saw them, attaching, removing, tampering, whatever, they would arrest them, not be the ones planting or removing the device.
Planting a device and capturing (partially) private data goes IMO way beyond the comparison in the court case to aiding physical vision with binoculars. In the case of Knotts/Armstrong, the FBI in fact planted the device with permission to the supplier and it was the supplier of the chemical that betrayed the trust of the suspect in the interest of preventing his product from being used for criminal activity. Personally I see a distinction though I couldn't tell if the court did.
To the layman it seems like a small but important step to go from convincing the chief of police or FBI superviser, that a specific crime is so likely (probable) that it 'warrants' such a bold action, to convincing a judge of probable cause. The difference is a tighter legal standard and having the review done by a somewhat neutral third party.
-
Law enforcement officers are empowered to do things that others are not. A non-LEO cannot serve a search warrant/arrest warrant or obtain a title III warrant to wiretap a suspects phone or drive a vehicle far in excess of posted limits legally.
-
http://volokh.com/2009/12/13/does-the-fourth-amendment-prohibit-warrantless-gps-surveillance/
IV. Why the Knotts/Karo Line Is a Reasonable One
Some readers may be thinking, “But wait, Knotts is wrong!” As a result, they may want the courts to do anything that helps limit Knotts or even plant the seeds of its overruling. That raises the more fundamental question of whether the future Supreme Court should stick with Knotts/Karo or adopt a different rule.
To answer this, it help to see Knotts and Karo as examples of a recurring question of Fourth Amendment law: How to adapt the inside/outside distinction in light of new technologies? As I argue in this article, the inside/outside distinction is the basic building block of the Fourth Amendment. Surveillance of open spaces does not trigger the Fourth Amendment, while surveillance that breaks into enclosed spaces does. This dividing line ordinarily gives the government the power to investigate open spaces but not enclosed ones. The key question is how or whether to apply this line when technology changes: If technology allows greater surveillance, should the Supreme Court move the Fourth Amendment line accordingly? Karo and Knotts update the old line in a way that retains the basic inside/outside distinction. The cases look to whether the information collected reveals information about the inside of the home or what is happening outside, treating the locating device as a virtual person who either enters the home or stays outside it.
I think that’s a reasonable choice, as it aims for technology neutrality. It’s the basic approach I advocate in applying the Fourth Amendment to the Internet. It’s not perfect, of course. In my view, it should also be supplemented by statutory privacy laws to regulate the use of GPS devices, much like existing statutory privacy law presently regulates location information for cell phones. Statutory privacy laws have the advantage of flexibility: They could adopt a mid-level standard such as “reasonable suspicion” to regulate GPS surveillance and deter abuses, something that is much harder to get from the Fourth Amendment (which ordinarily requires a warrant).
Finally, if you reject Knotts and the inside/outside line, you need to come up with a replacement. It’s easy to say that you think the Fourth Amendment should regulate GPS surveillance. But it’s much harder to come up with a general view as to how the Fourth Amendment should regulate public surveillance and then situate the case of GPS within it. It’s not impossible, but it’s much harder. It’s especially difficult for a group of Justices to agree on another line that could operate with a reasonable degree of clarity in a range of cases over time. So while Knotts/Karo do not provide the only line the Court could follow, I think they do offer a reasonable one.
-
**Should law enforcement engage in proactive terrorism investigations or wait to do post-blast investigations?**
http://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-arrests-terrorists-sting-operations-dallas-springfield/story?id=8666300
The FBI concluded two sting operations in the last two days that culminated with the arrests of a pair of terrorism suspects who believed they would be blowing up buildings in Dallas and Springfield, Ill.
Although not connected, officials say the FBI and Justice Department had to coordinate the timing of the two cases so that arrests would not cause suspects to get cold feet with their intention to conduct their operations.
Today, shortly after noon in Dallas, FBI agents swooped in on Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, who allegedly placed what he believed to be explosives in a car bomb near Fountain Place in downtown Dallas. Smadi, 19, a resident of Italy, Texas, is a citizen of Jordan and was in the U.S. illegally.
FBI agents became aware of Smadi on Internet chat rooms. According to an FBI affidavit filed by Thomas Petrokowski, head of a counterterrorism squad in the FBI's Dallas field office, "Smadi stood out, based on his vehement intention to actually conduct terror attacks in the United States."
Just 24 hours earlier, FBI agents in Springfield, Ill., arrested and charged Michael Finton with attempted murder, after he planted what he thought was a one-ton bomb outside Springfield's federal courthouse. Finton, aka Talib Islam, drove a van that he believed was carrying nearly a ton of explosives and parked it in front of the courthouse. Then, the FBI says, Finton "got out of the van," according to court documents and jumped into another car and dialed a cell phone to remotely detonate the bomb.
Finton's arrest was a sting operation, the explosives were fake. Finton was arrested and has been appointed a lawyer from the federal defenders office in Springfield. In Washington Thursday, David Kris, the assistant attorney general for the National Security Divsion, said of Finton's case, "Fortunately, a coordinated undercover law enforcement effort was able to thwart his efforts and ensure no one was harmed,"
Suspect Monitored on Internet Vowing Attacks
On chat rooms and jihadist Internet forums, Smadi consistently stated his commitment to attacks and violent jihad. According to the affidavit, after Smadi repeated these comments, an FBI undercover employee made contact with the young Jordanian and had about 10 communications with him. "During those interactions, Smadi made clear his intention to serve as a solider for [Osama] bin Laden and [al Qaeda], and to conduct violent jihad," according to the FBI affidavit.
-
The techniques that I would consider reasonable to extract information from a known terrorist to disrupt a planned, major terror act are far too graphic to post on this family friendly site. I would distinguish anything to do with mass murder, genocide or suicide bombing from the rules of criminal law enforcement as we once knew it. Besides the casualties of the act and the terror infliction on society, it is not possible to punish the suicide bomber after the fact.
-
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/25891/?p1=A4
Note that this is all private industry.
-
Telegraph UK: Every Email And Website To Be Stored By Brit Government
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Every email, phone call and website visit is to be recorded and stored after the Coalition Government revived controversial Big Brother snooping plans. '
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...overnment.html
-
**US Gov't uses Big Brother tactics on poor undocumented immigrants just trying to make a living.**
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/10/18/ST2010101806011.html?sid=ST2010101806011
Their surveillance effort captured more than 50,000 calls over six months, conversations that reached deep into Mexico and helped build a sprawling case against 43 suspects - including Mexican police and top officials - allegedly linked to a savage trafficking ring known as the Fernando Sanchez Organization.
According to the wiretaps and confidential informants, the suspects plotted kidnappings and killings and hired American teenage girls, with nicknames like Dopey, to smuggle quarter-pound loads of methamphetamine across the border for $100 a trip. To send a message to a rival, they dumped a disemboweled dog in his mother's front yard.
But U.S. law enforcement officials say the most worrisome thing about the Fernando Sanchez Organization was how aggressively it moved to set up operations in the United States, working out of a San Diego apartment it called "The Office."
At a time of heightened concern in Washington that drug violence along the border may spill into the United States, the case dubbed "Luz Verde," or Green Light, shows how Mexican cartels are trying to build up their U.S. presence.
The Fernando Sanchez Organization's San Diego venture functioned almost like a franchise, prosecutors say, giving it greater control over lucrative smuggling routes and drug distribution networks north of the border.
"They moved back and forth, from one side to the other. They commuted. We had lieutenants of the organization living here in San Diego and ordering kidnappings and murders in Mexico," said Todd Robinson, the assistant U.S. attorney who will prosecute the alleged drug ring next year.
The case shows that as the border becomes less of an operational barrier for Mexican cartels, it appears to be less of one for U.S. surveillance efforts. Because the suspects' cellphone and radio traffic could be captured by towers on the northern side of the border, U.S. agents were able to eavesdrop on calls made on Mexican cellphones, between two callers in Mexico - a tactic prosecutors say has never been deployed so extensively.
ad_icon
Captured on one wiretap: a cartel leader, a former homicide detective from Tijuana, negotiating with a Mexican state judicial police officer about a job offer to lead a death squad.
Recorded on other calls: the operation's biggest catch, Jesus Quinones Marquez, a high-ranking Mexican official and alleged cartel operative code-named "El Rinon," or "The Kidney." As he worked and socialized with U.S. law enforcement officials in his role as international liaison for the Baja California attorney general's office, Quinones passed confidential information to cartel bosses and directed Mexican police to take action against rival traffickers, prosecutors say.
He and 34 other suspects are now in U.S. jails. The remaining eight are still at large.
Investigators say it is not unusual for Mexican cartel leaders and their underlings to move north to seek refuge, or place representatives in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta to manage large deliveries of drugs. But the Fernando Sanchez Organization was more ambitious. It was building a network in San Diego, complete with senior managers to facilitate large and small drug shipments and sales.
-
I'm not familiar with this site, but saw this mentioned elsewhere:
http://www.itstactical.com/2010/10/19/carry-a-cloaking-device-for-your-cell-phone-anywhere-you-go/
-
It is total surveillance the the US government is pushing for. Your phone calls, emails and faxes haven't been private for years. Why would you expect your online surfing habits to be off limits? The child pornography thing is just an excuse to keep tabs on a lot of other stuff. You can install fancy
home security systems (http://www.alarm.com/) but so much about you is already in the public realm that even if your possessions aren't compromised your identity and personal information likely already is. Also, there is a big push in Washington to censor the Internet. Check this out: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91177/chamber-of-commerce-claims-growing-support-for-filtering-the-web/
EDITED TO ADD From Marc/Crafty: The link here has been reported by one of our members as a "malicious" website.
-
How is the US gov't pushing for total surveillance? Please cite your source.
-
In general, this thread-- in particular, your posts :lol: :lol: :lol:
Tangentially related:
The Office of Privacy Protection
www.privacyprotection.ca.gov
Haven't had a chance to look at it yet.
-
My posts clearly define the legal restrictions involved in various forms of investigation as a counterpoint to the often hysterical sloganeering on the topic.
-
GM: It was an effort at humor, denotedby the presence of this symbol: :lol:
-
Okay.
-
It all depends on the "reasonable expectation of privacy". If something is encrypted and does not involve the transmission of the protected data to a second party, then a warrant would most likely be required to seize it as evidence. Even then, things like banking records are most likely going to require a search warrant.
-
Is that only if the "evidence" is to be usable in a prosecution, or does that cover "sneak a peek" stuff too?
-
"sneak a peek" ?
-
I thought it a recognized phrase, but the gist of it is the idea that they can take a look but cannot use what they find as evidence because there was no warrant.
-
If you as a peace officer were to breach into an area covered under "reasonable expectation of privacy" without legal authorization, you open yourself up to criminal prosecution and civil liability.
-
So, if someone were to tap a phone line without permission, what would happen? Certainly any intel obtained or evidence derived therefrom would be inadmissable as evidence, but what else would actually happen?
-
Felony prosecution, imprisonment. In my state, some years back a retired state trooper was elected sheriff. He decided that he wanted to target some local alleged drug dealer with illegal wiretaps. The illegal taps were discovered, the sheriff was prosecuted and went to prison as a result. In Nevada, some years back, a NDI Agent and a DEA agent were discovered by other DEA agents engaging in illegal wiretaps. They were prosecuted and convicted of violating the federal wiretap statutes.
-
Aha! Found this:
http://www.law.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/37patriot.html
-
Covert/delayed notification search warrants as well as covert entries to install title III wiretaps are legally authorized acts.
-
http://www.fletc.gov/training/programs/legal-division/podcasts/hot-issues-podcasts/hot-issues-transcripts/covert-entry-search-warrants-transcript.html/?searchterm=search%20warrant
Covert Entry Search Warrants (podcast transcript)
Solari: Hi. This is Jenna Solari from the FLETC Legal Division. I’m here today with Mr. Keith Hodges, also from the Legal Division to talk to you about some more legal tools for your investigative tool box. Mr. Hodges, let’s talk about covert entry search warrants as provided in the USA Patriot Act. Now I’m pretty sure I’ve also heard these referred to as sneak and peek warrants. Can you start us off with a little background about these?
Hodges: Sure. The USA Patriot Act amended or added a lot of provisions to the US Code. One of the amended provisions was 18 US Code §3103a concerning procedural requirements when executing search warrants. Now you remember from your training that after you execute a search warrant we have to leave a return. The amendment permits officers, with a magistrate’s approval, to delay providing a return on the results of a search. Covert entry warrants have been around for a long time and the value of the Patriot Act is that it now provides specific statutory authority to use them.
Solari: Well I think you’ve already given me a little bit of a preview, but how specifically does a covert entry search warrant differ from a regular search warrant?
Hodges: That’s a killer question. Covert entry warrants are exactly the same as a regular warrant, except that with a covert entry warrant, the officers request, and the magistrate can authorize, a delay in providing a return to the subject of the search and that return as we’ve already said, advises the subject of the search that a search was conducted and if evidence is taken from the search, what evidence was taken. Now, the officers still have to convince a magistrate there’s probable cause to search and they must still execute and serve a return. But the main difference of a covert entry warrant and a traditional search warrant is that there’s a delay in providing a return to the target of the search.
Solari: Well it seems like that the provision then would be primarily useful in an investigation where the officers don’t want to tip off the subject of the search.
Hodges: Jenna, that’s exactly its value. If officers immediately execute a return, the subject will know he is the target of an investigation. And when that happens, the defendant will have a chance to destroy evidence that was not discovered, and he may tip off his criminal partners, flee the jurisdiction, threaten witnesses or otherwise possibly jeopardize the investigation.
Solari: Well that makes sense then. Now why the nickname, why have some commentators called covert entry warrants sneak and peeks?
Hodges: I’ll tell you it’s not necessarily an inaccurate description. A covert entry warrant comes in two types. In the first type, agents can enter the target’s home, look around, take pictures, go through files, hop on the computer to look at emails or data, and make copies of what’s seen. The scope of their looking around will be based on the facts in the affidavit and what the magistrate approves. In this type of covert entry warrant, the agents are not authorized to seize anything. So, a sneak and peek is not a bad way to characterize this type of covert entry warrant. In the other types of covert entry warrants, the officers are specifically allowed to seize evidence that’s listed in the warrant.
Solari: Well now how would the officers know which type of warrant they have? In other words, how do they know whether they can seize evidence?
Hodges: Well it depends on whether the officers asked the magistrate to seize evidence, and the justification provided to the magistrate that requested the cover entry warrant. Now a magistrate can authorize a delay in return notification if reasonable cause is shown that providing immediate notification of the search will have an adverse result. If that’s all that’s shown, in other words, all the officers have is reasonable cause; the officers can only get a sneak and peek. They can’t seize evidence. If however it’s shown that there’s a reasonable necessity for a seizure of evidence, then the magistrate can authorize not only the entry and a delay in the return, but also the seizure of evidence.
Solari: Alright, well let’s back up one second. You just said that if the agents can show a potential adverse result from notification then they can get a sneak and peek warrant. Now what is an adverse result, and could you give me some examples?
Hodges: Sure. That term is defined in 18 US Code §2705. An adverse result means that if the officers provide an immediate return after execution of the warrant that immediate return might endanger someone’s life or physical safety, or it might cause flight from prosecution by the bad guys notifying their confederates, it may result in the tampering or destruction of evidence, or result in the intimidation of potential witnesses, or otherwise seriously jeopardize an investigation or unduly delay a trial. This provision that provides us the authority to delay giving notification is a really valuable tool and if you think you’re going to go in and you need to execute a search warrant especially, a sneak and peek just to look around, and don’t want to tip off the confederates this is the tool to use.
Solari: This sounds like a great tool. Now how long the return could be delayed?
Hodges: Well for as long as the judge decides, and the statute also allows for extensions. It all depends on what facts are provided to the magistrate and what the magistrate decides to do.
Solari: Alright, so again just sort of grounded in reasonableness I guess. Now because this provision is in the USA Patriot Act, there’s gotta be a catch, so is it fair to say that this search warrant, this sneak and peek, has to somehow be connected to a terrorism investigation?
Hodges: Well as you well know, many Patriot Act provisions are terrorism-related, but not this one. While certainly useful in terrorism investigations, covert entry warrants can be used whenever officers can articulate an adverse result and the judge approves the covert entry warrant. It doesn’t have to be a terrorism investigation.
Solari: So just to be clear then, a magistrate could under the right circumstances approve a covert entry warrant in a fraud case that has nothing to do with terrorism?
Hodges: Yes, exactly. For example, if I have a probable cause that Joe is engaged in a fraud scheme with several other persons and that evidence of that scheme is located in his house, I might request a covert entry warrant to look around to determine the scope of the fraud, who are the actual or future fraud victims, where the proceeds of the fraud are being concealed, and very importantly, who the co-conspirators are. By using the covert entry warrant, I can see the evidence without tipping off criminal associates and causing them to flee or destroy evidence.
Solari: That’s a really powerful tool. Now in some public reporting, we’ve had people argue pro and con certain provisions of the Patriot Act. I think I’ve heard these warrants actually described by some of the people on the con side as nothing more than legalized burglary. Can that fairly be said to be an accurate description of sneak and peek warrants?
Hodges: I kind of like it, but I would tend to emphasize the word “legalized,” which would further mean there is no burglary; and I have read those claims and there are three things that opponents to covert entry warrants want to ignore. First, while the statutory provision wasn’t codified until 2001, these warrants have been around and used by the courts for a long, long time. Secondly, I think the operative word in “covert search warrant” is warrant. Like any search warrant, it has to be approved by a magistrate and supported by probable cause. And as we discussed earlier, the only difference between a covert entry and garden variety search warrant is that an immediate return - that immediate notification after execution of the warrant - is not required and the notification can be delayed. And finally is that for a covert entry warrant to be useful, the search has to be conducted when no one’s at home. The fact is there’s never been a requirement that a person be at home when a search warrant is executed.
Solari: That makes sense to me. These covert entry warrants appear to be an extremely useful tool for law enforcement officers, it seems they come in especially handy at the beginning of an investigation by not jeopardizing what comes later - like you said by tipping off confederates.
Hodges: Well I agree. Now, of course, with a garden variety warrant which requires an immediate return, the investigation can be severely impaired because the suspects know that officers are investigating. Covert entry warrants prevent that from happening. In addition, in complex cases with many defendants and wholesale concealing of evidence at various locations, these warrants can be used to ensure that all the defendants are identified and all the evidence is found. And again I like to remind folks of a couple things. First, it does not have to be a terrorism-related investigation; it can be for general crimes. Secondly, there two different types of covert entry warrants; one is a straight sneak and peek when you get to go in and look around, the other type is that you are actually allowed to actual seize evidence. And lastly, it’s the magistrate judge who is going to decide whether or not you get a sneak and peek. And so if you need a sneak and peek or a covert entry warrant, we need to include that in the affidavit and specifically tell the judge that that’s what you want, how long you want a delay for, and to articulate your reasons for that.
Solari: Well thank you Mr. Hodges for outlining for us the provisions and requirements of covert entry a/k/a sneak and peek warrants. I really appreciate that. Those of you out there who want to listen to some other of our podcast can find them at our website which is located at www.fletc.gov/legal.
-
By JULIA ANGWIN
The Obama administration is preparing a stepped-up approach to policing Internet privacy that calls for new laws and the creation of a new position to oversee the effort, according to people familiar with the situation.
The strategy is expected to be unveiled in a report being issued by the U.S. Commerce Department in coming weeks, these people said. The report isn't yet final and could change, these people said.
In a related move, the White House has created a special task force that is expected to help transform the Commerce Department recommendations into policy, these people said. The White House task force, set up three weeks ago, is led by Cameron Kerry, the brother of Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) and Commerce Department general counsel, and Christopher Schroeder, assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice.
The initiatives would mark a turning point in Internet policy. Recent administrations typically steered away from Internet regulations out of concern for stifling innovation. But the increasingly central role of personal information in the Internet economy helped spark government action, according to people familiar with the situation.
The Wall Street Journal has been examining this online information-gathering industry in its "What They Know" investigative series.
Privacy issues are bubbling up on Capitol Hill. Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas), co-chairman of the Congressional Privacy Caucus and ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he welcomed the administration's privacy initiative.
-
Alas, it appears the above piece only serves to distract from a failure on another front:
Physician, Heal Thyself
Posted by Jim Harper
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Commerce Department will soon come forth with a ”stepped-up approach to policing Internet privacy that calls for new laws and the creation of a new position to oversee the effort.”
Meanwhile, with nearly 22 months in office, President Obama has still not named a single candidate to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that Congress established to review the government’s actions in response to terrorism. Had he appointed a board, it would have issued three public reports by now, and we would be awaiting a fourth.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/physician-heal-thyself-2/
-
Good catch BBG!
On another front, what, if anything stops the Feds from using this on us?
=========
COMBAT BY CAMERA
The changing face of aerial reconnaissance
Aerial spying is 'now the centerpiece of our global war on terrorism.' And that has meant a growing and potentially huge business even as the Pentagon looks at cutting back on big-ticket items.
A Global Hawk robotic plane, hovering more than 11 miles above Afghanistan, can snap images of Taliban hide-outs so crystal clear that U.S. intelligence officials can make out the pickup trucks parked nearby — and how long they've been there.
Halfway around the globe in a underground laboratory in El Segundo, Raytheon Co. engineers who helped develop the cameras and sensors for the pilotless spy plane are now working on even more powerful devices that are revolutionizing the way the military gathers intelligence.
The new sensors enable flying drones to "listen in" on cellphone conversations and pinpoint the location of the caller on the ground. Some can even "smell" the air and sniff out chemical plumes emanating from a potential underground nuclear laboratory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get a daily snapshot of market numbers and trends, delivered right to your mobile phone. Text BUSINESS to 52669.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reconnaissance is "now the centerpiece of our global war on terrorism," said David L. Rockwell, an electronics analyst with aerospace research firm the Teal Group Corp. "The military wants to have an unblinking eye over the war zone."
And that has meant a growing and potentially huge business for the defense industry at a time when the Pentagon is looking at cutting back on big-ticket purchases such as fighter jets and Navy ships.
The drone electronics industry now generates about $3 billion in revenue, but that's expected to double to $6 billion in the next eight years, Teal Group estimates.
The industry's projected growth has fueled a surge in mergers and acquisitions of companies that develop and make the parts for the sensor systems, many of them in Southern California.
"There has been an explosion in the reconnaissance market," said Jon B. Kutler, founder of Admiralty Partners, a Century City private investment firm that buys and sells small defense firms."It's one of the few remaining growth areas."
Kutler's company recently acquired Torrance-based Trident Space & Defense, which manufactures hard drives that enable drones to store high-resolution images.
Trident, which has about 70 employees, has seen its sales more than double to about $40 million over the last five years.
The demand for sensors is growing as the Pentagon steps up use of drones for intelligence gathering.
More than 7,000 drones — ranging from the small, hand-launched Raven to the massive Global Hawk — are currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though some have been outfitted with laser-guided bombs or missiles — grabbing most of the news headlines — all are equipped with sensors for reconnaissance and surveillance work.
The most advanced cameras and sensors are on the Global Hawk, a long-endurance, high-altitude drone that can fly for 30 hours at a time at more than 60,000 feet, out of range of most antiaircraft missiles and undetectable to the human eye.
Peter W. Singer, author of "Wired for War," a book about robotic warfare, compares the technology to the popular "Where's Waldo" children's books, in which readers are challenged to find one person hidden in a mass of people.
The latest detectors not only can pick out Waldo from a crowd, but know when Waldo may have fired a rifle. Such sensors can detect the heat from the barrel of a gun and estimate when it was fired.
Many of the sensors have been developed by Raytheon engineers in El Segundo, where the company has had a long history of developing spy equipment, including those found on the famed U-2 spy plane.
Some of the more advanced cameras can cost more than $15 million and take 18 months to make. Raytheon develops the cameras in a humidity-controlled, dust-free laboratory to ensure that they are free of blemishes.
Each basketball-sized camera "must be perfect," said Oscar Fragoso, a Raytheon optical engineer. "If it isn't, we know we're putting lives at risk."
Raytheon has begun to face stiff competition as other aerospace contractors vie for its business.
Sparks, Nev.-based Sierra Nevada Corp., which is known for its work on developing parts for spy satellites, has developed a sensor system, named the Gorgon Stare, that widens the area that drones can monitor from 1 mile to nearly 3 miles.
Named for the creature in Greek mythology whose gaze turns victims to stone, the sensor system features 12 small cameras — instead of one large one. It is to be affixed to Reaper drones before the end of the year.
With the multiple cameras, the operator can follow numerous vehicles instead of just one, said Brig. Gen. Robert P. Otto, the U.S. Air Force's director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "By the end of the year, we're going to be fielding capabilities that are unlike anything we've used before."
But with an increase in the number of drone patrols and new sensor technology, the Air Force will be "drowning in data," Otto said. "That means we're going to need a lot more people looking at computer screens."
The Pentagon has said that drones last year took so much video footage that it would take someone 24 years to watch it all.
By this time next year, the Air Force expects to have almost 5,000 people trawling through the images for intelligence information. That's up from little more than 1,200 nine years ago.
"The reconnaissance work that's being done now takes seconds, where it used to take days," Otto said. "We're pushing the edge of technology."
william.hennigan@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
-
On another front, what, if anything stops the Feds from using this on us?
Money, personnel.
-
That is less than reassuring , , ,
-
The more data you gather, the more analysts you need to turn the data into intel to be disseminated. Were a drone to fly over you, and no one views it, would that matter? Again, it goes back to "reasonable expectation of privacy". In the public sphere, you don't have it.
-
"On another front, what, if anything stops the Feds from using this on us?"
"Money, personnel."
"That is less than reassuring"
------------------------------------
Personnel: 14.6 million employees
Money: $4 Trillion a year
These are not highly limiting factors.
If you don't want the Feds looking you over, stay away from questionable activities... like giving money to the chamber of commerce.
-
The federal employees either directly employed as law enforcement officers, or support personnel are a very small percentage of that.
-
GM et al:
a) I would submit that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in the public sphere if there is no one in sight, yet this technology would invade that privacy.
b) This technology can also spy on us when we are on private property.
Is there no articulable principal of privacy here? Is there no 9th Amendment right?
-
"there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in the public sphere if there is no one in sight"
I think so. GM sees this I think from a different perspective. If you are a suspect in a recent armed robbery, other competing rights come into play. But under ordinary circumstances, in a wilderness area or park, others have the same right to be there and enjoy nature and privacy, but not a right to follow or snoop on you. Stalking laws are based on that exact unenumerated right of privacy, everywhere you go. Federal employees in a national forest likewise have a right to be there, to go about their business protecting trees, enforcing rules, doing their specific job, but don't otherwise have any right to mess with your privacy, follow you or observe you without official reason. There might be an expectation that forest officials could stop by your campsite briefly to see if camping and fire rules are complied with, for example, but not to pull up a chair and observe continuously. That would be an obvious violation of an unemumerated right as you correctly suggest, IMHO.
-
GM et al:
a) I would submit that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in the public sphere if there is no one in sight, yet this technology would invade that privacy.
**Just because you can't see someone, doesn't mean someone can't see you. A reasonable expectation of privacy can be said to exist in a place where someone exhibits an actual expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable.**
https://www.fletc.gov/training/programs/legal-division/podcasts/4th-amendment-roadmap-podcasts/4th-amendment-transcripts/reasonable-expectation-of-privacy-part-1.html
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy (I) (podcast transcript)
Tim: Hi, this is Tim Miller and Jenna Solari. We’re back again talking about a 4th Amendment search. We discussed previously that the Fourth Amendment is triggered by a government intrusion into a place where one has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now Jenna, you told me who a government agent was, now let’s talk about reasonable expectation of privacy. Again, a government agent going into a place were one has a reasonable expectation of privacy triggers the 4th Amendment, correct?
Jenna: Yes, that’s right.
Tim: OK now, what’s a reasonable expectation of privacy?
Jenna: Well, a reasonable expectation of privacy, or “REP,” can be said to exist in a place where someone exhibits an actual expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable.
Tim: Sounds like a two part test.
Jenna: It is actually. There’s a subjective component, and that’s that actual expectation of privacy. So that would mean that someone actually believes that an item or an area has been concealed from public view. So, for instance, I’m in my hotel room and I want to have a private conversation with someone so I try to keep my voice low enough that I believe no one else can hear what I am saying. But then there is that second part of the two part test you mentioned, the objective test. Society has to agree that what I am doing to conceal something is reasonable, that I have taken appropriate steps to conceal something from public view. For instance, I am in that hotel room and I actually think that I am keeping my voice low enough so no one else can hear me, so I have that subjective part satisfied. But objectively, let’s say my voice is actually loud enough that someone can hear me out in the hallway where they have every right to be. So if a federal agent just happens to be standing out in the hallway and unbeknownst to me my voice is loud enough that he can hear what I am saying, then I don’t have that objective expectation of privacy. Society is not willing to agree that what I am doing is a reasonable way to keep myself from being overheard. So I wouldn’t have any REP in my conversation.
Tim: OK, well how about giving me some examples of how a person might exhibit an expectation of privacy that society is willing to accept as being reasonable.
Jenna: OK, well, I think the simplest example would be if you have an item you want conceal from public view, put it in an opaque container. Put it inside a suitcase or a backpack, or if you want to keep it in your car, put it in the glove box or the trunk where people can’t see it when they just happen to be walking by. If we’re talking about your body, we know that people typically have the highest expectation of privacy in their bodies and in their houses. So, let’s say you have a tattoo on your left bicep you don’t want people to see. The best way to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that is to put on a shirt that covers it up. Don’t walk around, you know, with a tank top on so the whole world can see your tattoo. Things inside the body have an incredibly high expectation of privacy that’s recognized by the courts. So, if you think of your skin as a giant container, everything within your body, like blood, saliva, urine -- you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in those things. Putting something inside your house, for the most part, gives you a reasonable expectation of privacy in that item, that is unless again, you put it somewhere where the whole world can see it. Let’s say you put it in your living room picture window where someone can see it from the street – then, again, society would not agree that you’ve taken reasonable steps to keep that secure from public view. But if you put it away somewhere where people couldn’t see it, then you’d have REP in that item. So things like that.
Tim: Sounds to me like if you put it inside of a container or you cover it up, society’s probably going to give you an expectation of privacy.
Jenna: Yes, that’s right.
Tim: Now, you know, a lot of kids nowadays have transparent book containers, book bags, and I think I know the answer to this, but can a child reasonably expect privacy in a transparent book bag?
Jenna: No, and that’s really the whole reason behind it. They’re required to carry transparent book bags, I assume, so that everybody can see what they have in there. So, they really wouldn’t have any reasonable expectation of privacy in those things that are inside that book bag, because again, they are out there for the whole world to see.
Tim: OK, well, you know, a trash can is a container. Can I reasonably expect privacy inside my trash can?
Jenna: That depends on where your trash can is, actually. If it’s inside your house, again, things that are inside your house usually get the highest protection from the courts so, yeah, you’d have REP in your trash, inside your trash can while it is still in your house. Now it gets a little different as the trash moves further from your house. If it’s still close to the house -- let’s say it’s just inside your garage or maybe just outside your front door -- that’s on that area that we call curtilage, and we will talk about that a little later, you probably still have REP in that trash in your trash can. It’s really when you put it out wherever collection takes place -- when you put it out on the street corner or the street in front of your house, what you have essentially done is told the whole world “I don’t want any of this any more.” You’ve abandoned that property and said “I want the trash man to take it away.” So, at that point you would not have any REP in that trash, even if you thought you did. Even if you actually thought that was private until the trash man took it, at that point society says, “no, you’ve thrown that away so you don’t have REP in that anymore.”
Tim: So, first, it has to be an actual expectation of privacy, and secondly, society has to recognize it as being reasonable.
Jenna: Yes, sir, that’s right.
Tim: OK, who can reasonably expect this privacy? For example, you know, I’ve got a house, it’s my house. I live there; I assume I can expect privacy inside my house.
Jenna: Absolutely.
Tim: Anybody else?
Jenna: Sure, if you had overnight guests in your house, let’s say friends of yours or family members came to visit and you let them stay overnight. Then you’ve essentially given them the run of at least part of your house. They have brought their private belongings in there and sort of established themselves in a room; they’d have REP inside your house. Social guests who stay for an extended period of time or who come by your house pretty frequently -- maybe they keep things in your house or inside your garage -- they may have REP in your house to some extent. I can tell you that people who wouldn’t have REP in there would be your commercial visitors, somebody who comes by just to sell you something or someone you invite just inside your front door maybe for five minutes at a time wouldn’t have any REP in your house.
Tim: So my mom and dad coming to visit for the weekend, they probably have an REP inside my house?
Jenna: Yes.
Tim: However, the paperboy coming to collect the bill would not.
Jenna: Right, the paperboy wouldn’t. Or, let’s say the pizza guy, who just steps inside for a second while you go get some cash to pay him for the pizza, he wouldn’t have any REP inside your house. He’s just that commercial visitor who stopped by for a few minutes.
Tim: How about people who rent hotel rooms? I guess the person who rents the room would have an REP inside that hotel room, would he not?
Jenna: Sure, because it’s really -- our 4th Amendment protection isn’t limited to just houses as physical structures. Really we are talking about dwellings, where people live, as least for some period of time. So, that would include a hotel room. And of course if you rented the room, you would have REP in the room. Someone else could, as well. Let’s say you and someone else go on a trip and so that person is sharing a room with you. That person has REP in there even if they weren’t the ones actually paying for it. They have a room key, which means they have the right to exclude people. They’re keeping things inside the room, so they would have REP in the room as well.
Tim: OK, I’ve got a car. I own that car; it’s my car -- I assume I have reasonable expectation of privacy in it.
Jenna: Yes, you would.
Tim: How about the passengers?
Jenna: Mere -- we call “mere passengers” is what I think you’re referring to -- usually have no REP in the car itself. And when I say “mere passenger” I mean, I’ve never borrowed your car, I don’t drive your car around, but at the end of work today I say, “Hey, Mr. Miller, can I grab a ride up to the front gate with you?” “Sure no problem,” you give me a ride up to the front gate. I’m just a mere passenger; I’m just along for a ride, so I don’t have any REP in your car or in the glove box or in the trunk. But I would retain REP in, say, I carry a briefcase and a purse from home to work every day. So when I bring those things into your car, I would still have an expectation of privacy in my belongings, I just would not have any REP in your car. Now, of course, it might be a little bit different if you shared that car with someone else -- a friend, a spouse or something like that. Now that person might have REP in the car if they are authorized to drive it around or they use it a good bit. But a mere passenger wouldn’t.
Tim: OK, why make a big deal out of all this, I mean, who has the REP? For example, suppose, I don’t know, Dillinger and I rob a bank. Dillinger owns the car, he drives the getaway car and we throw the guns and the money inside the trunk of Dillinger’s car. The cops then search the car and find that evidence. Can I get that evidence suppressed if the search is unreasonable?
Jenna: No, actually, and as I understand it it’s Dillinger’s car, right?
Tim: Right, yes.
Jenna: And you are essentially what we call a mere passenger, right? You’re basically just hitching a ride away from the bank robbery?
Tim: Check, I am just a mere passenger.
Jenna: Ok, so then, no, it would be the same situation as when you give me a ride up to the front gate -- I can’t have any REP in your glove box or in your trunk, so when the police search the car and they find the evidence in that trunk, Dillinger could complain about that search because that is his reasonable expectation of privacy. He could complain about whether it was reasonable or not. You couldn’t, though, because you don’t have any REP in that area, and we call that “no standing to object.” The only person who could object to the search is the person whose REP was intruded upon.
Tim: So, if I had no standing to object, I couldn’t object to the search even if it was unreasonable.
b) This technology can also spy on us when we are on private property.
**Two related doctrines apply, Plain View and Open Fields.**
http://www.fletc.gov/training/programs/legal-division/podcasts/4th-amendment-roadmap-podcasts/4th-amendment-transcripts/plain-view-podcast-transcript.html
Plain View (podcast transcript)
Miller: Jenna, let’s get this straight. There’s no REP in what an officer can see, hear or smell from a place he or she rightfully occupies; correct?
Solari: That’s right.
Miller: And that’s Mr. Hunsucker’s analogy “right to be, right to see.” So, if I’m a cop, standing on a public sidewalk, looking into the picture window of 123 Main Street and see a plant that I know is marijuana, I’ve not triggered the 4th Amendment. Isn’t that correct?
Solari: That’s right.
Miller: Why is the marijuana plant not considered to be in plain view?
Solari: Well, because you’ve only established two out of the three requirements for plain view. You have to observe the marijuana from a place you have a right to be. You satisfied this requirement in your example. You made the observation from a public sidewalk. Second, the incriminating nature of the evidence (the marijuana plant you can see through that picture window at 123 Main Street) has to be readily apparent. You satisfied that requirement too. Through your training and experience as a police officer you know what marijuana looks like.
Miller: So, what’s missing?
Solari: You have no lawful right of access. In your example, you haven’t explained that you have a warrant or any exception to the warrant requirement to actually enter or access 123 Main Street.
Miller: So, the plain view exception to the warrant requirement has three requirements. The officer must see the item from a place he or she rightfully occupies; it’s incriminating or evidentiary nature must be readily apparent to the officer; and, thirdly the officer must be able to lawfully access the evidence.
Solari: That’s right.
Miller: Is that right?
Solari: That’s right.
Miller: Now, in my example, I was lawfully present on the sidewalk when I observed the marijuana. How can I lawfully get inside 123 Main Street and make more observations?
Solari: Use what you’ve already seen and get an arrest warrant for the resident of 123 Main Street for possession of marijuana. Use what you’ve already seen through the picture window to go get a search warrant for that location. If you don’t have an arrest warrant or a search warrant, maybe there’s an exception to the warrant requirement that might let you inside. Maybe if you knock on the door you can get consent. If somebody runs inside whom you’re trying to apprehend maybe you can use hot pursuit. If the person inside 123 Main Street saw you looking through the picture window at his marijuana plant, grabbed it and made a dash for the garbage disposal, maybe you could use your probable cause coupled with destruction of evidence and use that exception to the warrant requirement.
Miller: The second requirement was that the evidentiary nature of the item must be readily apparent. That sounds almost like probable cause to me, correct?
Solari: Right
Miller: And based on training and experience, I think most officers can probably readily identify a marijuana plant.
Solari: Sure. I would think so. Readily apparent like you said means that the officer has probable cause to believe that whatever he or she is looking at is evidence of a crime - you can tell simply by looking at it. The officer has facts and circumstances made known to him, and those facts coupled with the officer’s observations, make the evidentiary nature of the object readily apparent. For example, let’s say officers are executing a search warrant inside 123 Main Street for a stolen television set. They know the resident’s a convicted felon and while their looking for the TV in places where they have a right to look, they see a handgun laying right there on the coffee table. Now obviously as a general matter, officers can secure firearms in a safe place during a search; however, in this case, there’s also probable cause to seize that firearm as evidence of a crime because the officers at the scene knows that a convicted felon in possession of a firearm is in violation of 18 USC §922 and of course that firearm does appear to be within the possession of a convicted felon.
Miller: Now finally, this third requirement is that the officer must have a lawful right of access.
Solari: Right and this is tricky. There’s a difference between lawfully present when the officer makes her observation and lawful access. Lawfully present refers to the officer’s position when she makes the observation. Lawful access refers to where she must be to actually put a hand on the item and retrieve it. So in your example, you were lawfully present on a sidewalk when you observed that marijuana through the picture window of 123 Main Street; however, you couldn’t actually lawfully put your hand out and touch that plant and seize it. You had no right of access.
Miller: Let’s assume I’ve got authority to be inside 123 Main Street where we saw that marijuana plant. Does that automatically allow me to go to the picture window and grab it?
Solari: Not necessarily. I’ve got to know what your authority is to actually access the room where you saw the marijuana growing. If you’ve got a search warrant to search 123 Main Street, then I’ll bet you’ve got authority to go search anywhere in that house where marijuana could be, so you’re probably going to get the plant then; however, if you knocked on the door and the owner let you in, but he refused to let you go any further than the foyer you still have no right of access to that plant you saw growing in the living room.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Open Field Doctrine Law & Legal Definition
The open field doctrine is a term used in criminal law to stand for the concept that anything plainly visible to the eye, even if it’s on private property, is subject to a search since it’s not hidden. Under this doctrine, consent to inspect the location is not required in order for a law enforcement officer to observe and report on things in plain view and include observations made. An open field is not an area protected under the Fourth Amendment, and there is no expectation of a right of privacy for an open field.
Is there no articulable principal of privacy here? Is there no 9th Amendment right?
**The 9th (The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.) would seem to me as not applicable, given that the above caselaw/doctrine comes from the previously enumerated 4th amendment.**
-
Last point first: My proposition is that amongst the unenumerated rates of the 9th are the right to privacy and the right of self-defense.
Private Open Fields: Hypothetical: I have private property which extends further than the human eye can see. I am standing on the property where no one not on the property can see me. Question presented: Do I have privacy, or can the Feds, who presumably have a right to be in outer space, spy on me from outer space? Or, can they spy on me from a drone?
-
"private property which extends further than the human eye can see...Do I have [a right of] privacy?"
We will see what GM and others say. I say yes. Of course you have that right, up and until it conflicts with some other more compelling right of someone else. Let's say that law enforcement has a reason to believe armed bank robbers may be hiding out there or that forest fire officials have reason to believe a fire may may spread from there. People also have the right to have bank robberies pursued and forest fires prevented. That does not eliminate your right, it just may in rare cases supersede it.
I recall county officials used to write to my uncle regarding a little used family lake cabin that we needed to update an old septic system to newer standards. My uncle, a 9-term county attorney of a nearby county, would answer them with two questions. He wanted to know why he hadn't seen any report showing that the property was polluting in any way, and secondly he wanted them to refresh his memory with a copy of a letter signed by him giving them the permission they need to go on the property to conduct such a study, because he certainly didn't recall granting that permission. It never went any further than that except that after he passed away the septic system suddenly needed upgrading. If they had pressed on with legal action, I doubt he could have stopped them, but I think the question goes to Crafty's point, what right do they have to enter (observe, run tests) and what right does the property owner have to prevent them?
-
Last point first: My proposition is that amongst the unenumerated rates of the 9th are the right to privacy and the right of self-defense.
Private Open Fields: Hypothetical: I have private property which extends further than the human eye can see. I am standing on the property where no one not on the property can see me. Question presented: Do I have privacy, or can the Feds, who presumably have a right to be in outer space, spy on me from outer space? Or, can they spy on me from a drone?
Do you control the air space over your property? Could a private aircraft fly over and see you? Much like those celebrity weddings and the paparazzi flying overhead to try to get photos, or a news chopper trying for mystery missile footage, we have numerous aircraft photographing footage everywhere but restricted airspace. You've got both government and privately owned satellites with very detailed photographic equipment overhead constantly. The courts have upheld that using aircraft to spot marijuana grows on private property that couldn't be approached on foot was lawful, again open fields/plain view doctrines.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
**So, after decades of 4th amendment caselaw related to search and seizure, we're going to reach into the 9th amendment bag of tricks and create new privacy rights when the fourth has already clearly defined them? What would that look like? Do we reverse every conviction now? Explain how the missing blonde case would be different with your concept of privacy. The rapist didn't sign a release to be recorded by the hotel security cameras. Was his right of privacy violated?**
-
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/04.html#3
''Open Fields.'' --In Hester v. United States, 96 the Court held that the Fourth Amendment did not protect ''open fields'' and that, therefore, police searches in such areas as pastures, wooded areas, open water, and vacant lots need not comply with the requirements of warrants and probable cause. The Court's announcement in Katz v. United States 97 that the Amendment protects ''people not places'' cast some doubt on the vitality of the open fields principle, but all such doubts were cast away in Oliver v. United States. 98 Invoking Hester's reliance on the literal wording of the Fourth Amendment (open fields are not ''effects'') and distinguishing Katz, the Court ruled that the open fields exception applies to fields that are fenced and posted. ''[A]n individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted out of doors in fields, except in the area immediately surrounding the home.'' 99 Nor may an individual demand privacy for activities conducted within outbuildings and visible by trespassers peering into the buildings from just outside. 100 Even within the curtilage and notwithstanding that the owner has gone to the extreme of erecting a 10- foot high fence in order to screen the area from ground-level view, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy from naked-eye inspection from fixed-wing aircraft flying in navigable airspace. 101 Similarly, naked-eye inspection from helicopters flying even lower contravenes no reasonable expectation of privacy. 102 And aerial photography of commercial facilities secured from ground-level public view is permissible, the Court finding such spaces more analogous to open fields than to the curtilage of a dwelling. 103
''Plain View.'' --Somewhat similar in rationale is the rule that objects falling in the ''plain view'' of an officer who has a right to be in the position to have that view are subject to seizure without a warrant 104 or that if the officer needs a warrant or probable cause to search and seize his lawful observation will provide grounds therefor. 105 The plain view doctrine is limited, however, by the probable cause requirement: officers must have probable cause to believe that items in plain view are contraband before they may search or seize them. 106
The Court has analogized from the plain view doctrine to hold that once officers have lawfully observed contraband, ''the owner's privacy interest in that item is lost,'' and officers may reseal a container, trace its path through a controlled delivery, and seize and reopen the container without a warrant. 107
-
"So, after decades of 4th amendment caselaw related to search and seizure, we're going to reach into the 9th amendment bag of tricks and create new privacy rights when the fourth has already clearly defined them?"
Is the Ninth Amendment meaningless? If not, then what does it mean?
-
I think your assertion that self defense would be covered under the 9th is very viable, given it's historic recognition in common law. I think other commonly recognized rights within society and the legal system that weren't specifically enumerated in the bill of rights would be covered by the 9th. It's not something to do lightly, as once the pandora's box were opened, then every activist judge would reach into the 9th for gay marriage, gov't healthcare, guranteed income and every other leftist cause du jour.
-
"I think other commonly recognized rights within society and the legal system that weren't specifically enumerated in the bill of rights would be covered by the 9th"
Privacy meets this standard, yes?
"It's not something to do lightly,"
AMEN!
"as once the pandora's box were opened, then every activist judge would reach into the 9th for gay marriage, gov't healthcare, guranteed income and every other leftist cause du jour."
Well, the activist judges are already doing that for gay marriage with the Equal Protection Clause. As for healthcare, guaranteed income, etc we already have FDR and BO (see his Chicago Public Radio interview in 200o or so) admitting that the Constitudtuion's rights are negative not, positive.
-
Privacy is already enumerated in the 4th, yes?
-
Privacy is already enumerated in the 4th, yes?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects (against unreasonable search/seizure)...
No. That did not protect anyone in Kelo (wrongly decided) and there was more privacy discovered in Griswold, Roe, and Lawrence decisions for examples than contained in the 4th. Can't speak for Crafty by I am saying a much greater right of privacy than the standard for which we require a search warrant. I don't know the words but an assumption of privacy, to be left alone in the pursuit of happiness, until another compelling interest becomes greater.
Here is California law regarding a landlord entering a tenant's space: http://www.landlord.com/lawresoverview.htm#6.%20Tenant%20Privacy%20and%20the%20Landlord%E2%80%99s%20Right%20to%20Enter%20the%20Dwelling
Basically it says only in an emergency or other established, compelling reason. Even though the landlord owns the place, the tenant has a right of privacy not based at all in protection from government search and seizure. That right is codified in state law but comes from a pre-existing and presumed right of privacy. Yes?
-
GM:
It appears you are following Bork's concept of privacy-- which is the very reason I opposed him for the Supreme Court.
-
Privacy is already enumerated in the 4th, yes?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects (against unreasonable search/seizure)...
No. That did not protect anyone in Kelo (wrongly decided)
**Kelo wasn't a 4th adm. case. It was 5th Adm. (Takings clause, as in "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."I agree that in Kelo, using gov't power seizing private property on behalf of another private entity cannot be defined as for public use by any reasonable definition.**
and there was more privacy discovered in Griswold, Roe, and Lawrence decisions for examples than contained in the 4th.
**Those were directly related to consensual sexual behavior amongst adults, which I would agree tend to fall under a right to privacy recognized by society (Which is part of a two part test related to the 4th regarding a reasonable expectation of privacy), with an exception in Roe, where a fetus also has rights to be considered.**
Can't speak for Crafty by I am saying a much greater right of privacy than the standard for which we require a search warrant. I don't know the words but an assumption of privacy, to be left alone in the pursuit of happiness, until another compelling interest becomes greater.
Here is California law regarding a landlord entering a tenant's space: http://www.landlord.com/lawresoverview.htm#6.%20Tenant%20Privacy%20and%20the%20Landlord%E2%80%99s%20Right%20to%20Enter%20the%20Dwelling
Basically it says only in an emergency or other established, compelling reason. Even though the landlord owns the place, the tenant has a right of privacy not based at all in protection from government search and seizure. That right is codified in state law but comes from a pre-existing and presumed right of privacy. Yes?
**No. Laws are structured to regulate interactions between citizens, such as landlords and tenants, while the constitution places limits on the powers of government.**
-
Lotta source links on the site.
Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary flacking for nudie-scanners, too
By: Timothy P. Carney
Senior Examiner Columnist
11/15/10 12:20 PM EST
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The companies that make the airport nudie-scanners have high-priced lobbying teams that include former congressmen, top Capitol Hill staff, and former TSA brass, as I reported in my column yesterday.
But because I focussed on registered lobbyists, I left out the highest-profile revolving-door character in the pay of the nudie-scanner industry: George W. Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. After the undie-bomber attempt on Christmas 2009, Chertoff went on a media tour promoting the use of these scanners, without disclosing that he was getting paid by Rapiscan, one of the two companies currently contracted by TSA to take a nude picture of you at the airport.
Here’s Chertoff in the NY Times just days after Christmas last year:
Screening technologies with names like millimeter-wave and backscatter X-ray can show the contours of the body and reveal foreign objects. Such machines, properly used, are a leap ahead of the metal detectors used in most airports, and supporters say they are necessary to keep up with the plans of potential terrorists. “If they’d been deployed, this would pick up this kind of device,” Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary, said in an interview…
Chertoff was quickly reamed for not disclosing how he had monetized his public service.
The whole situation is depressing for two reasons:
1) It’s tawdry how much our “public servants” use their government jobs as meal tickets.2) It’s sad how much companies set up their businesses to depend on government, and thus lobbyists.
Influence magazine is a trade publication of K Street, and one of Rapiscan’s hired guns, McKenna Aldridge, is touting this article on its website:
Rapiscan’s Presence on Capitol Hill Pays Off
…Rapiscan Systems, an OSI Systems Inc. subsidiary, has already taken note. The Hawthorne, Calif.-based company puts around 15 percent of its revenues back into the company to develop new technology.
But Rapiscan knows it needs to play ball in Washington to increase its profits. Like all companies that deal in homeland security, Rapiscan faces myriad legislative issues involving privacy, liability, customs, and the implementation of the 9/11 Commission recommendations. To compete with Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and L-3 Communications Corp., among other companies, two years ago Rapiscan opened a Washington office and hired more outside lobbyists and agency-specific federal marketing and sales staff.
The results have been apparent. Last year the company did $17 million t $20 million in contracts. Over the past six months, the company has had $40 million in sales to the U.S. government, compared with $8 million in 2004.
Two parting notes:
1) ”Play ball” is an interesting choice of words, considering that the alternative to walking through the Rapiscan is a friendly pat-down. 2) You’d think parent company OSI systems, when naming its nudie-scanner subsidiary, would have come up with a name less similar to RapeScan.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/bushs-homeland-security-secretary-flacking-for-nudie-scanners-too-108187479.html
-
German "fleshmob" shows up to protest the new nekid people scanners. Warning: scantily clothed, potato fed bods shown here:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jrgUhOrHFU&feature=player_embedded)
-
F.B.I. Seeks Wider Wiretap Law for Web
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: November 16, 2010
WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, traveled to Silicon Valley on Tuesday to meet with top executives of several technology firms about a proposal to make it easier to wiretap Internet users.
Mr. Mueller and the F.B.I.’s general counsel, Valerie Caproni, were scheduled to meet with senior managers of several major companies, including Google and Facebook, according to several people familiar with the discussions. How Mr. Mueller’s proposal was received was not clear.
“I can confirm that F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller is visiting Facebook during his trip to Silicon Valley,” said Andrew Noyes, Facebook’s public policy manager. Michael Kortan, an F.B.I. spokesman, acknowledged the meetings but did not elaborate.
Mr. Mueller wants to expand a 1994 law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, to impose regulations on Internet companies.
The law requires phone and broadband network access providers like Verizon and Comcast to make sure they can immediately comply when presented with a court wiretapping order.
Law enforcement officials want the 1994 law to also cover Internet companies because people increasingly communicate online. An interagency task force of Obama administration officials is trying to develop legislation for the plan, and submit it to Congress early next year.
The Commerce Department and State Department have questioned whether it would inhibit innovation, as well as whether repressive regimes might harness the same capabilities to identify political dissidents, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
Under the proposal, firms would have to design systems to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages. Services based overseas would have to route communications through a server on United States soil where they could be wiretapped.
A Google official declined to comment. Mr. Noyes said it would be premature for Facebook to take a position.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/technology/17wiretap.html
-
Don't touch my junk
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 19, 2010;
Ah, the airport, where modern folk heroes are made. The airport, where that inspired flight attendant did what everyone who's ever been in the spam-in-a-can crush of a flying aluminum tube - where we collectively pretend that a clutch of peanuts is a meal and a seat cushion is a "flotation device" - has always dreamed of doing: pull the lever, blow the door, explode the chute, grab a beer, slide to the tarmac and walk through the gates to the sanity that lies beyond. Not since Rick and Louis disappeared into the Casablanca fog headed for the Free French garrison in Brazzaville has a stroll on the tarmac thrilled so many.
Who cares that the crazed steward got arrested, pleaded guilty to sundry charges, and probably was a rude, unpleasant SOB to begin with? Bonnie and Clyde were psychopaths, yet what child of the '60s did not fall in love with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty?
And now three months later, the newest airport hero arrives. His genius was not innovation in getting out, but deconstructing the entire process of getting in. John Tyner, cleverly armed with an iPhone to give YouTube immortality to the encounter, took exception to the TSA guard about to give him the benefit of Homeland Security's newest brainstorm - the upgraded, full-palm, up the groin, all-body pat-down. In a stroke, the young man ascended to myth, or at least the next edition of Bartlett's, warning the agent not to "touch my junk."
Not quite the 18th-century elegance of "Don't Tread on Me," but the age of Twitter has a different cadence from the age of the musket. What the modern battle cry lacks in archaic charm, it makes up for in full-body syllabic punch.
Don't touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter. Don't touch my junk, Obamacare - get out of my doctor's examining room, I'm wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don't touch my junk, Google - Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon - my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?
In "Up in the Air," that ironic take on the cramped freneticism of airport life, George Clooney explains why he always follows Asians in the security line:
"They pack light, travel efficiently, and they got a thing for slip-on shoes, God love 'em."
"That's racist!"
"I'm like my mother. I stereotype. It's faster."
That riff is a crowd-pleaser because everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives - when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone.
The ultimate idiocy is the full-body screening of the pilot. The pilot doesn't need a bomb or box cutter to bring down a plane. All he has to do is drive it into the water, like the EgyptAir pilot who crashed his plane off Nantucket while intoning "I rely on God," killing all on board.
But we must not bring that up. We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety - 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.
The junk man's revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy. Metal detector? Back-of-the-hand pat? Okay. We will swallow hard and pretend airline attackers are randomly distributed in the population.
But now you insist on a full-body scan, a fairly accurate representation of my naked image to be viewed by a total stranger? Or alternatively, the full-body pat-down, which, as the junk man correctly noted, would be sexual assault if performed by anyone else?
This time you have gone too far, Big Bro'. The sleeping giant awakes. Take my shoes, remove my belt, waste my time and try my patience. But don't touch my junk.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/18/AR2010111804494.html
-
Ok, so stop screening anyone that doesn't look "muslimy". Jihadists would never use children, or the disabled or the elderly in their plots, or jihadis that don't a middle eastern appearance. Perhaps the US could force every muslim to register their religious affiliation so as to facilitate the screening process?
-
Coulda swore I heard somewhere about some small country beset by rabid enemies on all sides that manages its airports in an efficient manner that doesn't require the "security theater" of which the TSA partakes. Dang, what was that country's name. . . .
-
Glenn Beck says that former DHS head Chertkoff (sp?) is a lobbyist for the company that makes the scanners (Rapiscan) and that George Soros until 3 days ago had 11,000 shares.
Also, that Europe uses dogs just fine to solve the same challenges.
-
BBG,
Yes, and that small country has a domestic intelligence agency that allows it to assemble a dossier on every passenger and then profile. Are you advocating that we duplicate that here?
-
Before Maj. Hasan went on his shooting spree, he was a US Army officer with a DOD ID and a secret level security clearance. Exactly what sort of security screening should he have gone through before flying?
-
I've heard more about the Israeli behavioral interviewing techniques that I have heard about the dossiers. Behavioral interviewing I have no problem with. Assembling dossiers on every citizen I do.
-
"Before Maj. Hasan went on his shooting spree, he was a US Army officer with a DOD ID and a secret level security clearance. Exactly what sort of security screening should he have gone through before flying?"
A gun guy more than a chemist, I would run him through the metal detector. Who is next in this line - let's keep it moving folks.
Some profiling for flying might have brought his issues into view and saved lives. He was probably as likely to shoot up an airport as an airplane so that part of the Israeli system would have made sense.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940011,00.html
"Nidal Malik Hasan struck some of his classmates as a "ticking time bomb" whose strange personality telegraphed trouble long before he allegedly killed 13 people at Fort Hood."
-
Doug,
I'm pointing out that there are people in the US with positions in society that seems to be model citizens that could potentially be recruited to do things that could cause a catastrophic attack. Israel has a large domestic intelligence agency that does things not done in the US, this and their ethnically based profiling system are not things that can be done here under our legal system.
-
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20005566-10391695.html
A new government report released Thursday reveals that federal officers with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) who are tasked with the job of spotting terrorists at airports have little training.
As CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian first reported on Wednesday the TSA's behavior detection officers have never spotted a terrorist. Furthermore, the Government Accountability Office discovered that at least 16 known terrorists travelled through 8 different U.S. airports 23 times where the program had been implemented.
The GAO report says the TSA implemented its behavior detection program, which now costs taxpayers about $200 million annually, without first determining if there was any scientific valid basis for using it.
Read the GAO Report
As part of the program, specialized TSA officers watch passengers waiting in lines at select U.S. airport checkpoints and are supposed to be able to recognize anyone who is a security threat based on an analysis of facial expressions and body language.
According to the GAO, the TSA's behavior detection officers typically work in teams of two and "training includes 4 days of classroom courses, followed by 3 days of on-the-job training."
-
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8VGOUA00&show_article=1
Swaid says he understands the need for security checks. "It's in my interest and that of all the other travelers," he said. But the screening should be done equally for both Arabs and Jews, he said.
Proponents of Israel's approach say checking all passengers equally would require manpower and resources many times greater than are needed today and would needlessly extend the time passengers spend waiting for flights.
Ariel Merari, an Israeli terrorism expert who has written about aviation security, said ethnic profiling is both effective and unavoidable.
"It's foolishness not to use profiles when you know that most terrorists come from certain ethnic groups and certain age groups," he said. "A bomber on a plane is likely to be Muslim and young, not an elderly Holocaust survivor. We're talking about preventing a lot of casualties, and that justifies inconveniencing a certain ethnic group."
-
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10763.pdf
10Although SPOT is based in some respects on El Al’s aviation security program, El Al’s processes differ in substantive ways from those used by the SPOT program. In particular, El Al does not use a list of specific behaviors with numerical values for each, or a numerical threshold to determine whether or not to question a passenger; rather, El Al security officers utilize behavioral indicators as a basis for interviewing all passengers boarding El Al passenger aircraft, and accessing relevant intelligence databases, when deemed appropriate. In addition, El Al officials told us that they train all their personnel—not just security officers—in elements of behavior analysis, and conduct covert tests of their employees’ attentiveness at frequent intervals. According to these officials, El Al also permits what is termed “profiling,” in which passengers may be singled out for further questioning based on their nationality, ethnicity, religion, appearance, or other ascriptive characteristics, but these are not the only basis on which a passenger may be questioned. In addition, El Al security officers are empowered to bar any passenger from boarding an aircraft. The scale of El Al operations is considerably smaller than that of major airlines operating within the United States. As of 2008, El Al had a fleet of 34 aircraft. In Israel, El Al operates out of one hub airport, Ben-Gurion International, and also flies to Eilat, a city in southern Israel; in contrast, there are 457 TSA-regulated airports in the United States. In 2008, El Al had passenger boardings of about 3.6 million; in contrast, Southwest Airlines alone flew about 102 million passengers in the same year.
-
http://www.securitymanagement.com/article/profiling-aviation-threats-004454
A key reason for Israel’s excellent air-safety record, many security experts agree, is stringent screening of passengers before they even approach check-in counters. However, this procedure is being changed, because the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in April that security screens were discriminatory.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed suit in Israel’s supreme court in May 2007, arguing that airport security procedures wrongfully discriminate against Israeli Arabs, who make up 23 percent of Israel’s population of 7.1 million.
“This is an issue that we found across the board for Arab citizens. They are searched in a disproportionate way regardless of anything,” says Melanie Takefman, ACRI’s international media coordinator.
Security procedures begin as passengers approach the airport. Vehicles deemed to be a risk are ordered to stop for a search. At the terminal, agents closely question each passenger and run their names through databases. They tag passports and luggage with coded labels, according to each passenger’s ethnicity, essentially identifying Israeli Arabs as security risks.
Guards usually order more intensive searches for these passengers before they can proceed to check-in counters. Guards then escort them straight to their aircraft. The problem is that while few Israeli Jews are subjected to the extra scrutiny, nearly all Israeli Arabs have to undergo exhaustive checks, which can include body searches.
Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza are not even permitted to use Israeli airports. They must travel through Jordan instead.
-
Nice, ex congress-critters lobby for this stuff, current ones accept campaign contributions from those who peddle nudie scanners, but they are exempt from having their packages fondled. Only for the little people, I guess:
No Security Pat-Downs for Boehner
By JEFF ZELENY
3:37 p.m. | Updated Representative John A. Boehner, soon to be the Speaker of the House, has pledged to fly commercial airlines back to his home district in Ohio. But that does not mean that he will be subjected to the hassles of ordinary passengers, including the controversial security pat-downs.
As he left Washington on Friday, Mr. Boehner headed across the Potomac River to Reagan National Airport, which was bustling with afternoon travelers. But there was no waiting in line for Mr. Boehner, who was escorted around the metal detectors and body scanners, and taken directly to the gate.
Mr. Boehner, who was wearing a casual yellow sweater and tan slacks, carried his own bags and smiled pleasantly at passengers who were leaving the security checkpoint inside the airport terminal. It was unclear whether any passengers waiting in the security line, including Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida Democrat who lost his re-election bid, saw Mr. Boehner.
At a Capitol Hill news conference after Election Day, as Mr. Boehner began laying out the changes he would make when he becomes House Speaker, he announced that he would continue to fly commercial airlines (usually Delta) back to Ohio. It was a not-so-subtle dig at the outgoing Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, who had been criticized by Republicans for flying military airplanes when she returned home to San Francisco.
“Over the last 20 years, I have flown back and forth to my district on a commercial aircraft,” Mr. Boehner said at the time, “and I am going to continue to do that.”
And so on Friday, he did. But not without the perquisites of office, including avoiding those security pat-downs that many travelers are bracing for as holiday travel season approaches.
Michael Steel, a spokesman for the Republican leader, said in a statement that Mr. Boehner was not receiving special treatment. And a law enforcement official said that any member of Congress or administration official with a security detail is allowed to bypass security.
“The appropriate security procedures for all Congressional leaders, including Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid, are determined by the Capitol Police working with the Transportation Security Administration,” Mr. Steel said.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/no-security-pat-downs-for-boehner/?nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1
-
Those traveling with armed LEOs are exempted from screening. This includes prisoners.
-
Title 49: Transportation
PART 1544—AIRCRAFT OPERATOR SECURITY: AIR CARRIERS AND COMMERCIAL OPERATORS
Subpart C—Operations
Browse Next
§ 1544.219 Carriage of accessible weapons.
(a) Flights for which screening is conducted. The provisions of §1544.201(d), with respect to accessible weapons, do not apply to a law enforcement officer (LEO) aboard a flight for which screening is required if the requirements of this section are met. Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to a Federal Air Marshal on duty status under §1544.223.
(1) Unless otherwise authorized by TSA, the armed LEO must meet the following requirements:
(i) Be a Federal law enforcement officer or a full-time municipal, county, or state law enforcement officer who is a direct employee of a government agency.
(ii) Be sworn and commissioned to enforce criminal statutes or immigration statutes.
(iii) Be authorized by the employing agency to have the weapon in connection with assigned duties.
(iv) Has completed the training program “Law Enforcement Officers Flying Armed.”
(2) In addition to the requirements of paragraph (a)(1) of this section, the armed LEO must have a need to have the weapon accessible from the time he or she would otherwise check the weapon until the time it would be claimed after deplaning. The need to have the weapon accessible must be determined by the employing agency, department, or service and be based on one of the following:
(i) The provision of protective duty, for instance, assigned to a principal or advance team, or on travel required to be prepared to engage in a protective function.
(ii) The conduct of a hazardous surveillance operation.
(iii) On official travel required to report to another location, armed and prepared for duty.
(iv) Employed as a Federal LEO, whether or not on official travel, and armed in accordance with an agency-wide policy governing that type of travel established by the employing agency by directive or policy statement.
(v) Control of a prisoner, in accordance with §1544.221, or an armed LEO on a round trip ticket returning from escorting, or traveling to pick up, a prisoner.
(vi) TSA Federal Air Marshal on duty status.
(3) The armed LEO must comply with the following notification requirements:
(i) All armed LEOs must notify the aircraft operator of the flight(s) on which he or she needs to have the weapon accessible at least 1 hour, or in an emergency as soon as practicable, before departure.
(ii) Identify himself or herself to the aircraft operator by presenting credentials that include a clear full-face picture, the signature of the armed LEO, and the signature of the authorizing official of the agency, service, or department or the official seal of the agency, service, or department. A badge, shield, or similar device may not be used, or accepted, as the sole means of identification.
(iii) If the armed LEO is a State, county, or municipal law enforcement officer, he or she must present an original letter of authority, signed by an authorizing official from his or her employing agency, service or department, confirming the need to travel armed and detailing the itinerary of the travel while armed.
(iv) If the armed LEO is an escort for a foreign official then this paragraph (a)(3) may be satisfied by a State Department notification.
(4) The aircraft operator must do the following:
(i) Obtain information or documentation required in paragraphs (a)(3)(ii), (iii), and (iv) of this section.
(ii) Advise the armed LEO, before boarding, of the aircraft operator's procedures for carrying out this section.
(iii) Have the LEO confirm he/she has completed the training program “Law Enforcement Officers Flying Armed” as required by TSA, unless otherwise authorized by TSA.
(iv) Ensure that the identity of the armed LEO is known to the appropriate personnel who are responsible for security during the boarding of the aircraft.
(v) Notify the pilot in command and other appropriate crewmembers, of the location of each armed LEO aboard the aircraft. Notify any other armed LEO of the location of each armed LEO, including FAM's. Under circumstances described in the security program, the aircraft operator must not close the doors until the notification is complete.
(vi) Ensure that the information required in paragraphs (a)(3)(i) and (ii) of this section is furnished to the flight crew of each additional connecting flight by the Ground Security Coordinator or other designated agent at each location.
(b) Flights for which screening is not conducted. The provisions of §1544.201(d), with respect to accessible weapons, do not apply to a LEO aboard a flight for which screening is not required if the requirements of paragraphs (a)(1), (3), and (4) of this section are met.
(c) Alcohol. (1) No aircraft operator may serve any alcoholic beverage to an armed LEO.
(2) No armed LEO may:
(i) Consume any alcoholic beverage while aboard an aircraft operated by an aircraft operator.
(ii) Board an aircraft armed if they have consumed an alcoholic beverage within the previous 8 hours.
(d) Location of weapon. (1) Any individual traveling aboard an aircraft while armed must at all times keep their weapon:
(i) Concealed and out of view, either on their person or in immediate reach, if the armed LEO is not in uniform.
(ii) On their person, if the armed LEO is in uniform.
(2) No individual may place a weapon in an overhead storage bin.
-
Those traveling with armed LEOs are exempted from screening. This includes prisoners.
There are a lot of laws that Congress exempts itself from that likely would remain on the books long if they had to endure them.
-
It's not just congress, it's anyone with a LEO security detail, like mayors, Governors and the like. The assumption is that the NYPD cops assigned to Bloomberg will keep him from wearing a suicide vest onto the flight.
-
A EU official tries to articulate a right , , ,
By John W. Miller
Senior European Union officials campaigned publicly for the first time Tuesday for an online “right to be forgotten.” Viviane Reding, EU commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, introduced the idea earlier this month. Her proposed rules, which now face 12 to 18 months of debate before they can become EU law, would force companies like Facebook to offer users the right to permanently delete photos, contact info and messages posted on websites.
She was the keynote speaker on Tuesday morning at the 2010 European Data Protection and Privacy Conference.
Welcoming “an opportunity to explain this publicly for the first time,” Mrs. Reding, rather unusually for a European politician, invoked the Almighty: “God forgives and forgets, but the web never does.”
That should change, she said. “There are great sites where you can share information with friends, but it may be one day that you don’t want to share that information any more.”
Privacy lawyers say they aren’t so sure the EU is on firm legal ground. “If you voluntarily give information to a private company, it’s pretty clear they own that information,” says a senior partner at a major U.S. law firm.
“We still need to work out the details, but I support the right to be forgotten,” said Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the Article 29 Working Party, an alliance of national data supervisors. “Personally, I’ve done things, we’ve all done things we’d like to be forgotten.”
Like Mrs. Reding, he also argued the philosophical: “One of the most fundamental things in human life is to grow, to change, to be an individual, to remove the stamp that defines you.”
-
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/images/pdf/1012-geotags.pdf
Very good stuff here.
-
By JULIA ANGWIN
The Obama administration called Thursday for the creation of a Privacy Policy Office that would help develop an Internet "privacy bill of rights" for U.S citizens and coordinate privacy issues globally.
The U.S. Commerce Department's report stopped short of calling directly for specific privacy legislation. Instead, it recommends a "framework" to protect people from a burgeoning personal data-gathering industry and fragmented U.S. privacy laws that cover certain types of data but not others.
The report marks a turning point for federal Internet policy. During the past 15 years of the commercial Internet, Congress and executive branch agencies have largely taken a hands off approach to the Internet out of a concern that a heavy government hand would stifle innovation.
More
Complete Coverage: What They Know
.The report cites comments from some major technology companies, including Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., expressing concerns about the current patchwork of rules and guidelines governing online privacy.
The 88-page Commerce Department report states that the use of personal information has increased so much that privacy laws may now be needed to restore consumer trust in the medium.
The report is preliminary and will be completed next year. At that time, the administration is expected to make more specific legislative recommendations.
The report rejects the current state of Internet privacy notices. It says people shouldn't be expected to read and understand the legal jargon contained in privacy policies "that nobody understands, if they say anything about privacy at all."
A better approach, the report suggests, might be for companies to conduct privacy impact assessments that would be available to the public. Such reports "could create consumer awareness of privacy risks in a new technological context," the report said.
The Commerce report says people should be notified when data about them is being used in a way that is different than the reason for which it was collected. "Consumers need to know that when their data are re-used, the re-use will not cause them harm or unwarranted surprise," the report says.
It calls for a Privacy Policy Office that would "serve as a center of commercial data privacy policy expertise." The agency wouldn't oversee government use of data or existing health and financial privacy laws. Instead, it would aim to help the personal data-gathering industry develop codes of conduct that could be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission.
The report also calls for the development of a national data breach law that would make it easier for companies to navigate the current patchwork of state data breach laws.
It also calls for strengthening the existing wiretapping law—written in 1986—to protect more types of data from government surveillance.
Write to Julia Angwin at julia.angwin@wsj.com
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395204576023521659672058.html#ixzz18IVnjUbO
-
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/technology/1012/gallery.data_miners/index.html?iid=HLM
These data miners know everything about you
Gathering your personal information to sell to marketers, insurers, employers and anyone else who wants it is big business. Here are some of the key players.
-
Good intel there GM. Here's more:
DECEMBER 18, 2010
Your Apps Are Watching You
A WSJ Investigation finds that iPhone and Android apps are breaching the privacy of smartphone users
By SCOTT THURM and YUKARI IWATANI KANE
Few devices know more personal details about people than the smartphones in their pockets: phone numbers, current location, often the owner's real name—even a unique ID number that can never be changed or turned off.
These phones don't keep secrets. They are sharing this personal data widely and regularly, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
An examination of 101 popular smartphone "apps"—games and other software applications for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone's location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.
The findings reveal the intrusive effort by online-tracking companies to gather personal data about people in order to flesh out detailed dossiers on them.
WSJ's Julia Angwin explains to Simon Constable how smartphone apps collect and broadcast data about your habits. Many don't have privacy policies and there isn't much you can do about it.
Among the apps tested, the iPhone apps transmitted more data than the apps on phones using Google Inc.'s Android operating system. Because of the test's size, it's not known if the pattern holds among the hundreds of thousands of apps available.
Apps sharing the most information included TextPlus 4, a popular iPhone app for text messaging. It sent the phone's unique ID number to eight ad companies and the phone's zip code, along with the user's age and gender, to two of them.
Both the Android and iPhone versions of Pandora, a popular music app, sent age, gender, location and phone identifiers to various ad networks. iPhone and Android versions of a game called Paper Toss—players try to throw paper wads into a trash can—each sent the phone's ID number to at least five ad companies. Grindr, an iPhone app for meeting gay men, sent gender, location and phone ID to three ad companies.
"In the world of mobile, there is no anonymity," says Michael Becker of the Mobile Marketing Association, an industry trade group. A cellphone is "always with us. It's always on."
The Journal's Cellphone Testing Methodology
The Wall Street Journal analyzed 50 popular applications, or "apps," on each of the iPhone and Android operating systems to see what information about the phones, their users and their locations the apps send to themselves and to outsiders. More >
iPhone maker Apple Inc. says it reviews each app before offering it to users. Both Apple and Google say they protect users by requiring apps to obtain permission before revealing certain kinds of information, such as location.
"We have created strong privacy protections for our customers, especially regarding location-based data," says Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr. "Privacy and trust are vitally important."
The Journal found that these rules can be skirted. One iPhone app, Pumpkin Maker (a pumpkin-carving game), transmits location to an ad network without asking permission. Apple declines to comment on whether the app violated its rules.
Smartphone users are all but powerless to limit the tracking. With few exceptions, app users can't "opt out" of phone tracking, as is possible, in limited form, on regular computers. On computers it is also possible to block or delete "cookies," which are tiny tracking files. These techniques generally don't work on cellphone apps.
The makers of TextPlus 4, Pandora and Grindr say the data they pass on to outside firms isn't linked to an individual's name. Personal details such as age and gender are volunteered by users, they say. The maker of Pumpkin Maker says he didn't know Apple required apps to seek user approval before transmitting location. The maker of Paper Toss didn't respond to requests for comment.
Journal Community
Vote: Do you think apps should tell you when they collect and send information about the mobile device?
Many apps don't offer even a basic form of consumer protection: written privacy policies. Forty-five of the 101 apps didn't provide privacy policies on their websites or inside the apps at the time of testing. Neither Apple nor Google requires app privacy policies.
To expose the information being shared by smartphone apps, the Journal designed a system to intercept and record the data they transmit, then decoded the data stream. The research covered 50 iPhone apps and 50 on phones using Google's Android operating system. (Methodology at WSJ.com/WTK.)
The Journal also tested its own iPhone app; it didn't send information to outsiders. The Journal doesn't have an Android phone app.
Among all apps tested, the most widely shared detail was the unique ID number assigned to every phone. It is effectively a "supercookie," says Vishal Gurbuxani, co-founder of Mobclix Inc., an exchange for mobile advertisers.
On iPhones, this number is the "UDID," or Unique Device Identifier. Android IDs go by other names. These IDs are set by phone makers, carriers or makers of the operating system, and typically can't be blocked or deleted.
"The great thing about mobile is you can't clear a UDID like you can a cookie," says Meghan O'Holleran of Traffic Marketplace, an Internet ad network that is expanding into mobile apps. "That's how we track everything."
Ms. O'Holleran says Traffic Marketplace, a unit of Epic Media Group, monitors smartphone users whenever it can. "We watch what apps you download, how frequently you use them, how much time you spend on them, how deep into the app you go," she says. She says the data is aggregated and not linked to an individual.
More From the Series
A Web Pioneer Profiles Users by Name
Web's New Goldmine: Your Secrets
Personal Details Exposed Via Biggest Sites
Microsoft Quashed Bid to Boost Web Privacy
On Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only
Stalking by Cellphone
Google Agonizes Over Privacy
On the Web, Children Face Intensive Tracking
'Scrapers' Dig Deep for Data on Web
Facebook in Privacy Breach
Insurers Test Data Profiles to Identify Risky Clients
Shunned Profiling Technology on the Verge of Comeback
Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs
The Tracking Ecosystem
Follow @whattheyknow on Twitter
Complete Coverage: What They Know
The main companies setting ground rules for app data-gathering have big stakes in the ad business. The two most popular platforms for new U.S. smartphones are Apple's iPhone and Google's Android. Google and Apple also run the two biggest services, by revenue, for putting ads on mobile phones.
Apple and Google ad networks let advertisers target groups of users. Both companies say they don't track individuals based on the way they use apps.
Apple limits what can be installed on an iPhone by requiring iPhone apps to be offered exclusively through its App Store. Apple reviews those apps for function, offensiveness and other criteria.
Apple says iPhone apps "cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user's prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used." Many apps tested by the Journal appeared to violate that rule, by sending a user's location to ad networks, without informing users. Apple declines to discuss how it interprets or enforces the policy.
Phones running Google's Android operating system are made by companies including Motorola Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Google doesn't review the apps, which can be downloaded from many vendors. Google says app makers "bear the responsibility for how they handle user information."
Google requires Android apps to notify users, before they download the app, of the data sources the app intends to access. Possible sources include the phone's camera, memory, contact list, and more than 100 others. If users don't like what a particular app wants to access, they can choose not to install the app, Google says.
"Our focus is making sure that users have control over what apps they install, and notice of what information the app accesses," a Google spokesman says.
Neither Apple nor Google requires apps to ask permission to access some forms of the device ID, or to send it to outsiders. When smartphone users let an app see their location, apps generally don't disclose if they will pass the location to ad companies.
Lack of standard practices means different companies treat the same information differently. For example, Apple says that, internally, it treats the iPhone's UDID as "personally identifiable information." That's because, Apple says, it can be combined with other personal details about people—such as names or email addresses—that Apple has via the App Store or its iTunes music services. By contrast, Google and most app makers don't consider device IDs to be identifying information.
A growing industry is assembling this data into profiles of cellphone users. Mobclix, the ad exchange, matches more than 25 ad networks with some 15,000 apps seeking advertisers. The Palo Alto, Calif., company collects phone IDs, encodes them (to obscure the number), and assigns them to interest categories based on what apps people download and how much time they spend using an app, among other factors.
By tracking a phone's location, Mobclix also makes a "best guess" of where a person lives, says Mr. Gurbuxani, the Mobclix executive. Mobclix then matches that location with spending and demographic data from Nielsen Co.
In roughly a quarter-second, Mobclix can place a user in one of 150 "segments" it offers to advertisers, from "green enthusiasts" to "soccer moms." For example, "die hard gamers" are 15-to-25-year-old males with more than 20 apps on their phones who use an app for more than 20 minutes at a time.
Mobclix says its system is powerful, but that its categories are broad enough to not identify individuals. "It's about how you track people better," Mr. Gurbuxani says.
Some app makers have made changes in response to the findings. At least four app makers posted privacy policies after being contacted by the Journal, including Rovio Mobile Ltd., the Finnish company behind the popular game Angry Birds (in which birds battle egg-snatching pigs). A spokesman says Rovio had been working on the policy, and the Journal inquiry made it a good time to unveil it.
Free and paid versions of Angry Birds were tested on an iPhone. The apps sent the phone's UDID and location to the Chillingo unit of Electronic Arts Inc., which markets the games. Chillingo says it doesn't use the information for advertising and doesn't share it with outsiders.
Apps have been around for years, but burst into prominence when Apple opened its App Store in July 2008. Today, the App Store boasts more than 300,000 programs.
Other phone makers, including BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. and Nokia Corp., quickly built their own app stores. Google's Android Market, which opened later in 2008, has more than 100,000 apps. Market researcher Gartner Inc. estimates that world-wide app sales this year will total $6.7 billion.
Many developers offer apps for free, hoping to profit by selling ads inside the app. Noah Elkin of market researcher eMarketer says some people "are willing to tolerate advertising in apps to get something for free." Of the 101 apps tested, the paid apps generally sent less data to outsiders.
Ad sales on phones account for less than 5% of the $23 billion in annual Internet advertising. But spending on mobile ads is growing faster than the market overall.
Central to this growth: the ad networks whose business is connecting advertisers with apps. Many ad networks offer software "kits" that automatically insert ads into an app. The kits also track where users spend time inside the app.
Some developers feel pressure to release more data about people. Max Binshtok, creator of the DailyHoroscope Android app, says ad-network executives encouraged him to transmit users' locations.
Mr. Binshtok says he declined because of privacy concerns. But ads targeted by location bring in two to five times as much money as untargeted ads, Mr. Binshtok says. "We are losing a lot of revenue."
Other apps transmitted more data. The Android app for social-network site MySpace sent age and gender, along with a device ID, to Millennial Media, a big ad network.
In its software-kit instructions, Millennial Media lists 11 types of information about people that developers may transmit to "help Millennial provide more relevant ads." They include age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views. In a re-test with a more complete profile, MySpace also sent a user's income, ethnicity and parental status.
A spokesman says MySpace discloses in its privacy policy that it will share details from user profiles to help advertisers provide "more relevant ads." My Space is a unit of News Corp., which publishes the Journal. Millennial did not respond to requests for comment on its software kit.
App makers transmitting data say it is anonymous to the outside firms that receive it. "There is no real-life I.D. here," says Joel Simkhai, CEO of Nearby Buddy Finder LLC, the maker of the Grindr app for gay men. "Because we are not tying [the information] to a name, I don't see an area of concern."
Scott Lahman, CEO of TextPlus 4 developer Gogii Inc., says his company "is dedicated to the privacy of our users. We do not share personally identifiable information or message content." A Pandora spokeswoman says, "We use listener data in accordance with our privacy policy," which discusses the app's data use, to deliver relevant advertising. When a user registers for the first time, the app asks for email address, gender, birth year and ZIP code.
Google was the biggest data recipient in the tests. Its AdMob, AdSense, Analytics and DoubleClick units collectively heard from 38 of the 101 apps. Google, whose ad units operate on both iPhones and Android phones, says it doesn't mix data received by these units.
Google's main mobile-ad network is AdMob, which it bought this year for $750 million. AdMob lets advertisers target phone users by location, type of device and "demographic data," including gender or age group.
A Google spokesman says AdMob targets ads based on what it knows about the types of people who use an app, phone location, and profile information a user has submitted to the app. "No profile of the user, their device, where they've been or what apps they've downloaded, is created or stored," he says.
Apple operates its iAd network only on the iPhone. Eighteen of the 51 iPhone apps sent information to Apple.
Apple targets ads to phone users based largely on what it knows about them through its App Store and iTunes music service. The targeting criteria can include the types of songs, videos and apps a person downloads, according to an Apple ad presentation reviewed by the Journal. The presentation named 103 targeting categories, including: karaoke, Christian/gospel music, anime, business news, health apps, games and horror movies.
People familiar with iAd say Apple doesn't track what users do inside apps and offers advertisers broad categories of people, not specific individuals.
Apple has signaled that it has ideas for targeting people more closely. In a patent application filed this past May, Apple outlined a system for placing and pricing ads based on a person's "web history or search history" and "the contents of a media library." For example, home-improvement advertisers might pay more to reach a person who downloaded do-it-yourself TV shows, the document says.
The patent application also lists another possible way to target people with ads: the contents of a friend's media library.
How would Apple learn who a cellphone user's friends are, and what kinds of media they prefer? The patent says Apple could tap "known connections on one or more social-networking websites" or "publicly available information or private databases describing purchasing decisions, brand preferences," and other data. In September, Apple introduced a social-networking service within iTunes, called Ping, that lets users share music preferences with friends. Apple declined to comment.
Tech companies file patents on blue-sky concepts all the time, and it isn't clear whether Apple will follow through on these ideas. If it did, it would be an evolution for Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who has spoken out against intrusive tracking. At a tech conference in June, he complained about apps "that want to take a lot of your personal data and suck it up."
—Tom McGinty and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries contributed to this report.
-
There was a prediction out of cell phone use in Japan that by now cell phones and cell phone usage including all internet would be free at least to a decent consumer because the advertisers would pay your way to get access. This is the opposite. If you were a train passenger in Tokyo and consented to the service, you could be alerted to what movies were playing or what the restaurant specials are at the next stop. Advertisers could hit consumers with precision instead of paying for broadcast to the whole metro and the subscriber of the service could benefit from timely, relevant, carefully placed info as well receiving a free service for particpating in the program. Key to that scenario (in a free society) is that you could opt-in but you could also opt out.
My older cell phone had a software switch where you could switch your GPS off and hide it except for emergency services like a 911 call. I can't find that option on my current 'smartphone' (treo, not iphone or android) meaning I assume that a GPS of me is running and sending all the time for anyone clever enough to track me, like a freeware or paidware app writer. I notice that google searches from my cell phone tend to know where I am and give me local results first. Nice feature up to a point. When they decide to sell off the complete record of everywhere I've been to the highest bidder or every bidder, then it is not such a nice feature.
Opting out of privacy surrenders and unwanted advertising should always be a choice at a fair market price. Bad business behavior like this by an unregulated market gives the over-regulators another generation of life and energy, and gives the Democrats and RINOs who yearn for a more government-centric, fully-regulated society the winning side of another consumer issue. Free market conservatives and libertarians should get out in front of these privacy loss and disclosure issues. Like the Do Not Call list concept, some government protection can be a good thing. Give us the easy option of not being tracked or recorded.
-
Depending on gov't to protect your privacy is like expecting it to protect your person. Law enforcement in the US is mostly stuck reacting to crimes after the fact.
-
Depending on gov't to protect your privacy is like expecting it to protect your person. Law enforcement in the US is mostly stuck reacting to crimes after the fact.
True, however in general I like to think that by having laws with penalties and law enforcement available to enforce those laws, most people are deterred from breaking those laws.
For example, the "do not call list" has not eliminated calls, but I do think the volume of calls is much less. If you put some sharp teeth into the penalty, and/or increase civil liability, even more people would be deterred.
-
It seems to me that having clear statement of legal rights of privacy should be of great assistance to people looking to defend their privacy.
-
What would that statement look like?
-
GM---You won't like the source
This doesn't cover non social networking stuff but if it didn't happen on facebook did it really happen???
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/bill-privacy-rights-social-network-users
A Bill of Privacy Rights for Social Network Users
Commentary by Kurt Opsahl
Social network service providers today are in a unique position. They are intermediaries and hosts to our communications, conversations and connections with loved ones, family, friends and colleagues. They have access to extremely sensitive information, including data gathered over time and from many different individuals.
Here at EFF, we've been thinking a lot recently about what specific rights a responsible social network service should provide to its users. Social network services must ensure that users have ongoing privacy and control over personal information stored with the service. Users are not just a commodity, and their rights must be respected. Innovation in social network services is important, but it must remain consistent with, rather than undermine, user privacy and control. Based on what we see today, therefore, we suggest three basic privacy-protective principles that social network users should demand:
#1: The Right to Informed Decision-Making
Users should have the right to a clear user interface that allows them to make informed choices about who sees their data and how it is used.
Users should be able to see readily who is entitled to access any particular piece of information about them, including other people, government officials, websites, applications, advertisers and advertising networks and services.
Whenever possible, a social network service should give users notice when the government or a private party uses legal or administrative processes to seek information about them, so that users have a meaningful opportunity to respond.
#2: The Right to Control
Social network services must ensure that users retain control over the use and disclosure of their data. A social network service should take only a limited license to use data for the purpose for which it was originally given to the provider. When the service wants to make a secondary use of the data, it must obtain explicit opt-in permission from the user. The right to control includes users' right to decide whether their friends may authorize the service to disclose their personal information to third-party websites and applications.
Social network services must ask their users' permission before making any change that could share new data about users, share users' data with new categories of people, or use that data in a new way. Changes like this should be "opt-in" by default, not "opt-out," meaning that users' data is not shared unless a user makes an informed decision to share it. If a social network service is adding some functionality that its users really want, then it should not have to resort to unclear or misleading interfaces to get people to use it.
#3: The Right to Leave
Users giveth, and users should have the right to taketh away.
One of the most basic ways that users can protect their privacy is by leaving a social network service that does not sufficiently protect it. Therefore, a user should have the right to delete data or her entire account from a social network service. And we mean really delete. It is not enough for a service to disable access to data while continuing to store or use it. It should be permanently eliminated from the service's servers.
Furthermore, if users decide to leave a social network service, they should be able to easily, efficiently and freely take their uploaded information away from that service and move it to a different one in a usable format. This concept, known as "data portability" or "data liberation," is fundamental to promote competition and ensure that users truly maintain control over their information, even if they sever their relationship with a particular service.
-
So, is there a real concern/demand for such protections in social networking? Say you started "Rachelbook" with the policies below as your selling point. Do you think that would be a winning business plan for attracting people who go out of their way to post pictures of themselves puking on spring break?
-
Generally, I would like to see the principal of "opt-in" as versus "opt-out" with full and easy to understand disclosure of exactly what is involved.
-
Facebook certainly has its problems . However your description of facebook is a couple of years old. The fastest growing group of facebook users are 55+. Personally facebook is very valuable part of my business (not to mention linkedin) and I use to organize or be informed about community events for grown up type stuff.
I am really grateful that I went to college before it would have been normal that pictures of me at every single party I attended would end up on facebook
The privacy concerned social network already exists with Diaspora but I don't see it actually being a facebook competitor.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr
-
Another thing I would like to see is that the presence of surveillance cameras, private or governmental, must be posted.
-
Hundreds of correctional officers from prisons across America descended last spring on a shuttered penitentiary in West Virginia for annual training exercises.
Some officers played the role of prisoners, acting like gang members and stirring up trouble, including a mock riot. The latest in prison gear got a workout — body armor, shields, riot helmets, smoke bombs, gas masks. And, at this year’s drill, computers that could see the action.
Perched above the prison yard, five cameras tracked the play-acting prisoners, and artificial-intelligence software analyzed the images to recognize faces, gestures and patterns of group behavior. When two groups of inmates moved toward each other, the experimental computer system sent an alert — a text message — to a corrections officer that warned of a potential incident and gave the location.
The computers cannot do anything more than officers who constantly watch surveillance monitors under ideal conditions. But in practice, officers are often distracted. When shifts change, an observation that is worth passing along may be forgotten. But machines do not blink or forget. They are tireless assistants.
The enthusiasm for such systems extends well beyond the nation’s prisons. High-resolution, low-cost cameras are proliferating, found in products like smartphones and laptop computers. The cost of storing images is dropping, and new software algorithms for mining, matching and scrutinizing the flood of visual data are progressing swiftly.
A computer-vision system can watch a hospital room and remind doctors and nurses to wash their hands, or warn of restless patients who are in danger of falling out of bed. It can, through a computer-equipped mirror, read a man’s face to detect his heart rate and other vital signs. It can analyze a woman’s expressions as she watches a movie trailer or shops online, and help marketers tailor their offerings accordingly. Computer vision can also be used at shopping malls, schoolyards, subway platforms, office complexes and stadiums.
All of which could be helpful — or alarming.
“Machines will definitely be able to observe us and understand us better,” said Hartmut Neven, a computer scientist and vision expert at Google. “Where that leads is uncertain.”
Google has been both at the forefront of the technology’s development and a source of the anxiety surrounding it. Its Street View service, which lets Internet users zoom in from above on a particular location, faced privacy complaints. Google will blur out people’s homes at their request.
Google has also introduced an application called Goggles, which allows people to take a picture with a smartphone and search the Internet for matching images. The company’s executives decided to exclude a facial-recognition feature, which they feared might be used to find personal information on people who did not know that they were being photographed.
Despite such qualms, computer vision is moving into the mainstream. With this technological evolution, scientists predict, people will increasingly be surrounded by machines that can not only see but also reason about what they are seeing, in their own limited way.
The uses, noted Frances Scott, an expert in surveillance technologies at the National Institute of Justice, the Justice Department’s research agency, could allow the authorities to spot a terrorist, identify a lost child or locate an Alzheimer’s patient who has wandered off.
The future of law enforcement, national security and military operations will most likely rely on observant machines. A few months ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s research arm, awarded the first round of grants in a five-year research program called the Mind’s Eye. Its goal is to develop machines that can recognize, analyze and communicate what they see. Mounted on small robots or drones, these smart machines could replace human scouts. “These things, in a sense, could be team members,” said James Donlon, the program’s manager.
Millions of people now use products that show the progress that has been made in computer vision. In the last two years, the major online photo-sharing services — Picasa by Google, Windows Live Photo Gallery by Microsoft, Flickr by Yahoo and iPhoto by Apple — have all started using face recognition. A user puts a name to a face, and the service finds matches in other photographs. It is a popular tool for finding and organizing pictures.
Kinect, an add-on to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming console, is a striking advance for computer vision in the marketplace. It uses a digital camera and sensors to recognize people and gestures; it also understands voice commands. Players control the computer with waves of the hand, and then move to make their on-screen animated stand-ins — known as avatars — run, jump, swing and dance. Since Kinect was introduced in November, game reviewers have applauded, and sales are surging.
To Microsoft, Kinect is not just a game, but a step toward the future of computing. “It’s a world where technology more fundamentally understands you, so you don’t have to understand it,” said Alex Kipman, an engineer on the team that designed Kinect.
‘Please Wash Your Hands’
A nurse walks into a hospital room while scanning a clipboard. She greets the patient and washes her hands. She checks and records his heart rate and blood pressure, adjusts the intravenous drip, turns him over to look for bed sores, then heads for the door but does not wash her hands again, as protocol requires. “Pardon the interruption,” declares a recorded women’s voice, with a slight British accent. “Please wash your hands.”
Three months ago, Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, N.Y., began an experiment with computer vision in a single hospital room. Three small cameras, mounted inconspicuously on the ceiling, monitor movements in Room 542, in a special care unit (a notch below intensive care) where patients are treated for conditions like severe pneumonia, heart attacks and strokes. The cameras track people going in and out of the room as well as the patient’s movements in bed.
==================
The first applications of the system, designed by scientists at General Electric, are immediate reminders and alerts. Doctors and nurses are supposed to wash their hands before and after touching a patient; lapses contribute significantly to hospital-acquired infections, research shows.
The camera over the bed delivers images to software that is programmed to recognize movements that indicate when a patient is in danger of falling out of bed. The system would send an alert to a nearby nurse.
If the results at Bassett prove to be encouraging, more features can be added, like software that analyzes facial expressions for signs of severe pain, the onset of delirium or other hints of distress, said Kunter Akbay, a G.E. scientist.
Hospitals have an incentive to adopt tools that improve patient safety. Medicare and Medicaid are adjusting reimbursement rates to penalize hospitals that do not work to prevent falls and pressure ulcers, and whose doctors and nurses do not wash their hands enough. But it is too early to say whether computer vision, like the system being tried out at Bassett, will prove to be cost-effective.
Mirror, Mirror
Daniel J. McDuff, a graduate student, stood in front of a mirror at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. After 20 seconds or so, a figure — 65, the number of times his heart was beating per minute — appeared at the mirror’s bottom. Behind the two-way mirror was a Web camera, which fed images of Mr. McDuff to a computer whose software could track the blood flow in his face.
The software separates the video images into three channels — for the basic colors red, green and blue. Changes to the colors and to movements made by tiny contractions and expansions in blood vessels in the face are, of course, not apparent to the human eye, but the computer can see them.
“Your heart-rate signal is in your face,” said Ming-zher Poh, an M.I.T. graduate student. Other vital signs, including breathing rate, blood-oxygen level and blood pressure, should leave similar color and movement clues.
The pulse-measuring project, described in research published in May by Mr. Poh, Mr. McDuff and Rosalind W. Picard, a professor at the lab, is just the beginning, Mr. Poh said. Computer vision and clever software, he said, make it possible to monitor humans’ vital signs at a digital glance. Daily measurements can be analyzed to reveal that, for example, a person’s risk of heart trouble is rising. “This can happen, and in the future it will be in mirrors,” he said.
Faces can yield all sorts of information to watchful computers, and the M.I.T. students’ adviser, Dr. Picard, is a pioneer in the field, especially in the use of computing to measure and communicate emotions. For years, she and a research scientist at the university, Rana el-Kaliouby, have applied facial-expression analysis software to help young people with autism better recognize the emotional signals from others that they have such a hard time understanding.
The two women are the co-founders of Affectiva, a company in Waltham, Mass., that is beginning to market its facial-expression analysis software to manufacturers of consumer products, retailers, marketers and movie studios. Its mission is to mine consumers’ emotional responses to improve the designs and marketing campaigns of products.
John Ross, chief executive of Shopper Sciences, a marketing research company that is part of the Interpublic Group, said Affectiva’s technology promises to give marketers an impartial reading of the sequence of emotions that leads to a purchase, in a way that focus groups and customer surveys cannot. “You can see and analyze how people are reacting in real time, not what they are saying later, when they are often trying to be polite,” he said. The technology, he added, is more scientific and less costly than having humans look at store surveillance videos, which some retailers do.
The facial-analysis software, Mr. Ross said, could be used in store kiosks or with Webcams. Shopper Sciences, he said, is testing Affectiva’s software with a major retailer and an online dating service, neither of which he would name. The dating service, he said, was analyzing users’ expressions in search of “trigger words” in personal profiles that people found appealing or off-putting.
Watching the Watchers
Maria Sonin, 33, an office worker in Waltham, Mass., sat in front of a notebook computer looking at a movie trailer while Affectiva’s software, through the PC’s Webcam, calibrated her reaction. The trailer was for “Little Fockers,” starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, which opened just before Christmas. The software measured her reactions by tracking movements on a couple of dozen points on her face — mostly along the eyes, eyebrows, nose and the perimeter of her lips.
To the human eye, Ms. Sonin appeared to be amused. The software agreed, said Dr. Kaliouby, though it used a finer-grained analysis, like recording that her smiles were symmetrical (signaling amusement, not embarrassment) and not smirks. The software, Ms. Kaliouby said, allows for continuous, objective measurement of viewers’ response to media, and in the future will do so in large numbers on the Web.
Ms. Sonin, an unpaid volunteer, said later that she did not think about being recorded by the Webcam. “It wasn’t as if it was a big camera in front of you,” she said.
=================
Page 3 of 3)
Christopher Hamilton, a technical director of visual effects, has used specialized software to analyze facial expressions and recreate them on the screen. The films he has worked on include “King Kong,” “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Matrix Revolutions.” Using facial-expression analysis technology to gauge the reaction of viewers, who agree to be watched, may well become a valuable tool for movie makers, said Mr. Hamilton, who is not involved with Affectiva.
Today, sampling audience reaction before a movie is released typically means gathering a couple of hundred people at a preview screening. The audience members then answer questions and fill out surveys. Yet viewers, marketing experts say, are often inarticulate and imprecise about their emotional reactions.
The software “makes it possible to measure audience response with a scene-by-scene granularity that the current survey-and-questionnaire approach cannot,” Mr. Hamilton said. A director, he added, could find out, for example, that although audience members liked a movie over all, they did not like two or three scenes. Or he could learn that a particular character did not inspire the intended emotional response.
Emotion-sensing software, Mr. Hamilton said, might become part of the entertainment experience — especially as more people watch movies and programs on Internet-connected televisions, computers and portable devices. Viewers could share their emotional responses with friends using recommendation systems based on what scene — say, the protagonists’ dancing or a car chase — delivered the biggest emotional jolt.
Affectiva, Dr. Picard said, intends to offer its technology as “opt-in only,” meaning consumers have to be notified and have to agree to be watched online or in stores. Affectiva, she added, has turned down companies, which she declined to name, that wanted to use its software without notifying customers.
Darker Possibilities
Dr. Picard enunciates a principled stance, but one that could become problematic in other hands.
The challenge arises from the prospect of the rapid spread of less-expensive yet powerful computer-vision technologies.
At work or school, the technology opens the door to a computerized supervisor that is always watching. Are you paying attention, goofing off or daydreaming? In stores and shopping malls, smart surveillance could bring behavioral tracking into the physical world.
More subtle could be the effect of a person knowing that he is being watched — and how that awareness changes his thinking and actions. It could be beneficial: a person thinks twice and a crime goes uncommitted. But might it also lead to a society that is less spontaneous, less creative, less innovative?
“With every technology, there is a dark side,” said Hany Farid, a computer scientist at Dartmouth. “Sometimes you can predict it, but often you can’t.”
A decade ago, he noted, no one predicted that cellphones and text messaging would lead to traffic accidents caused by distracted drivers. And, he said, it was difficult to foresee that the rise of Facebook and Twitter and personal blogs would become troves of data to be collected and exploited in tracking people’s online behavior.
Often, a technology that is benign in one setting can cause harm in a different context. Google confronted that problem this year with its face-recognition software. In its Picasa photo-storing and sharing service, face recognition helps people find and organize pictures of family and friends.
But the company took a different approach with Goggles, which lets a person snap a photograph with a smartphone, setting off an Internet search. Take a picture of the Eiffel Tower and links to Web pages with background information and articles about it appear on the phone’s screen. Take a picture of a wine bottle and up come links to reviews of that vintage.
Google could have put face recognition into the Goggles application; indeed, many users have asked for it. But Google decided against it because smartphones can be used to take pictures of individuals without their knowledge, and a face match could retrieve all kinds of personal information — name, occupation, address, workplace.
“It was just too sensitive, and we didn’t want to go there,” said Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google. “You want to avoid enabling stalker behavior.”
-
Another thing I would like to see is that the presence of surveillance cameras, private or governmental, must be posted.
I can tell you as someone who has worked in environments with video surveillance, that you soon stop thinking about it.
-
In many circumstances this might be true, but in many others I think not.
Try an experiment. Have someone you don't know and whose motives may or may not be known to you follow you around with a camera all the time. See how it feels.
Requiring posting the presence of cameras seems to me quite a simple and right thing to do.
-
A number of years ago, I was unfortunately a part of a national news story. I went to great lengths to avoid being interviewed and filmed. Just what restrictions on the press do you propose?
-
Try an experiment. Have someone you don't know and whose motives may or may not be known to you follow you around with a camera all the time. See how it feels.
Requiring posting the presence of cameras seems to me quite a simple and right thing to do.
Another thing I would like to see is that the presence of surveillance cameras, private or governmental, must be posted.
A number of years ago, I was unfortunately a part of a national news story. I went to great lengths to avoid being interviewed and filmed. Just what restrictions on the press do you propose?
I am a bit confused, but interested. Different questions/issues are being addressed. As GM has pointed out, and/or I did, photography on public property is pretty well open and protected. I do a lot of photography and know the laws. Except for rare exceptions you do not have to ask "permission". Nor is there any age restrictions, etc. as long as there is not an expectation of privacy. Whether the "press" is shooting the picture or not. "Street shooting" has been around for a long time. How you "feel" about being shot is not legally relevant. Now the question, how it can be used is another issue. Perhaps not for commercial purposes, but for "fine art" there are few restrictions. You can avoid being "interviewed"; you can probably avoid being filmed on private property, but on public property it is difficult if not impossible to avoid being filmed/shot. And you have little recourse. There can and should be no restrictions.
Crafty, are you saying that signs should be posted in public spaces that surveillance cameras are being used?
On street corners? In front of ATM machines? Inside Office lobbies? Government buildings? Hotels? As long as you have no expectation of privacy,
I don't think there should be any restrictions on cameras.
The key is expectation of privacy. For example, cameras in a hotel lobby/hallway/elevator seem reasonable. Cameras in your private room are not.
Shots through your bedroom window from the street are legal; shots of you nude sunbathing in your enclosed back yard from a neighbor's tall tree are not.
-
"Crafty, are you saying that signs should be posted in public spaces that surveillance cameras are being used?
On street corners? In front of ATM machines? Inside Office lobbies? Government buildings? Hotels?"
Yes.
"As long as you have no expectation of privacy, I don't think there should be any restrictions on cameras."
I have not said otherwise! I have said that people should be informed if they are systematically surveilled. To be perfectly clear, what I have in mind is different from, say, videoing someone on a workman's comp fraud case, or a politician or other public figure simply hiding cameras and recording every and anybody in sight.
@GM: I would love to hear about that little adventure of yours, eithere here or by email :wink:
PS: It occurs to me that your , , , comfort with authority may come from your being surveilled all the time :lol:
-
"Crafty, are you saying that signs should be posted in public spaces that surveillance cameras are being used?
On street corners? In front of ATM machines? Inside Office lobbies? Government buildings? Hotels?"
Yes.
"As long as you have no expectation of privacy, I don't think there should be any restrictions on cameras."
I have not said otherwise! I have said that people should be informed if they are systematically surveilled.
So you have no objection to someone photography you without your permission at will in a public space?
They find you "handsome" :-D
-
"Crafty, are you saying that signs should be posted in public spaces that surveillance cameras are being used?
On street corners? In front of ATM machines? Inside Office lobbies? Government buildings? Hotels?"
Yes.
I guess what I am asking is since I or anyone can photograph you at will in a public place, without telling you or asking your permission,
why should the establishment, i.e. Hotel, etc. be required to give you notice?
-
Check this out:
www.spokeo.com
-
@JDN:
Perhaps because if a human being is doing it, usually I can see them. Surveillance cameras are often quite sneaky. Also, with the accelerating technology in this area we are looking at levels of surveillance previously unimaginable.
-
Crafty,
So, do you think the jurisdictions where police have arrested people for videotaping them in public venues are justified?
-
If you have a speeding ticket in our state, I can already look up your birth date. If you write me a check, I know your bank account number. This new law could post under housing, tax policy or Glibness, but nobody cares politically about a landlord's paperwork issues, so let's turn it around the other way. If you want to mow a lawn, shovel a walk, change a light bulb or a faucet washer for me, fine, give me your social security number.
New law effective 5 days ago (who knew?) requires a rental property owner to file a 1099 for anyone everyone that provided $600 of service in a year - that is $50/mo. The only way to know if it will reach $600 per year is to track it from the first dollar and require a W-9 before the mower sets a wheel on the property and before the first dollar changes hands. Part I required on the W-9: Exact name and exact matching social security number, not last 4 digits or any effort at privacy protection.
Those my age now look back and see how many people you would have your ss# by now as this new law carries over to every other area of money changing hands.
What could possibly go wrong? Besides bad landlords with info to sell, all the predator would have to do is stand in front of a vacant property, hire out small jobs, collect identity theft info and leave without paying while the work is in process.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/01/new-law-creates-big-tax-headache-rental-property-owners
Write to your new member of congress.
-
Well, they had to pass it to find out what's in it.
-
"Crafty, So, do you think the jurisdictions where police have arrested people for videotaping them in public venues are justified?"
How do you get that from what I am saying? :?
-
The argument is that there is a right of privacy enjoyed in the public venue by law enforcement and unauthorized audio/video is a form of wiretapping.
My argument, along with the ACLU and Radley Balko (to my regret) is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public.
-
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2011/01/schumers-ploy.html
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Schumer's Ploy
This was inevitable...
When investigators discovered that Arizona gunman Jared Lee Loughner had been rejected by the Army (because of admitted drug use), it was just a matter of time before some politician connected the dots: Hey, let's require military recruiters to report anyone with a history of drug abuse to other federal agencies!
Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), come on down. Earlier this week, Mr. Schumer proposed that federal officials who learn of an individual's illegal drug use must report that information to the FBI. The admission would then go into a federal database, and be used to deny the individual the right to purchase a gun.
From FoxNews.com:
Noting that the alleged shooter in the Tucson massacre had admitted to military recruiters that he had used drugs on several occasions, Schumer said he is proposing to the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that the military be required to to notify federal officials about such admissions. He said such a process does not require new legislation.
[snip]
Schumer said if military recruiters or other officials report admissions of drug use to a national database, those individuals could be denied a gun.
After Jared Loughner was interviewed by the military, he was rejected from the Army because of excessive drug use. Now by law, by law that's on the books, she should not have been allowed to buy a gun," Schumer told NBC.
"But the law doesn't require the military to notify the FBI about that and in this case they didn't. So I--this morning--I'm writing the administration and urging that be done and the military notify the FBI when someone is rejected from the military for excessive drug use and that be added to the FBI database."
Obviously, Schumer's "proposal" is little more than a thinly-veiled effort to restrict Second Amendment rights. But unfortunately, his suggestion may gain traction, given the fallout from the Tucson tragedy and the administration's own feelings on gun control. We can hear the arguments now: This is a reasonable proposal; it won't require any new laws and it might prevent a similar massacre in the future.
But even a cursory examination reveals that the Schumer suggestion is a horribly bad idea, on multiple levels. First, it places a undue burden on military recruiters, who talk to literally dozens of potential recruits during any given week. We're reasonably sure that Senator Schumer has no idea (read: doesn't care) how much work--and paperwork--is involved in processing a single person into the U.S. military.
Now, on top of all that effort, Schumer wants armed forces recruiters--who often work in a "one-deep" office, miles from the nearest military installation--to screen all of their contacts for illegal drug use and report it to the FBI. Memo to Mr. Schumer: in 21st Century America, most of the young men and women who express an interest in military service are ultimately rejected, for a variety of reasons. So, the recruiter must wade through his list of rejects, looking for individuals whose drug use might make them a future, crazed gunman.
Readers will also note that Senator Schumer didn't bother to define the level of illegal drug use that should be reported to the FBI. Why is that an issue? Because the U.S. military, thank God, has standards that are much tougher than society as a whole. By regulation, the armed services routinely reject applicants who fail a urinalysis test, or admit to the recreational use of marijuana (or other drugs) on more than 15 occasions. That's the way it should be. We don't want stoners (or drunks) handling classified information, or maintaining multi-billion dollar weapons systems.
But that doesn't necessarily mean those same individuals should be denied the right to own a gun. In many cases, that rejection by the military is a wake-up call, convincing young people to give up the weed or the booze and become responsible adults. Those individuals, with no arrest record or convictions on file, should not be penalized for what they told a military recruiter years ago. Under current laws, persons in that category are still eligible for gun ownership, and we see no reason to change.
Besides, the type of drug use in Lougher's case was not a clear predictor of his future rampage. We're guessing the marijuana didn't help, but no one can make the case that Lougher was pushed over the edge because of his drug use. Indeed, the type of activity that Lougher told the Army about is a misdemeanor offense in much of the country.
Ask yourself this question: Do we really need to create a national database of young people who have admitted to marijuana use, and send the FBI to pay them a visit--on the very remote chance they might buy a gun and go off the deep end? Personally, I'd rather see the FBI devote its resources to more important tasks, such as tracking down the thousands of individuals from terrorist havens who enter this country each year. That group poses a far greater menace than military rejects who admit to past recreational drug use and may choose to buy a gun some day.
Schumer's proposal creates civil liberties issues as well. Requiring military recruiters to report applicant's admitted drug use could be construed as a form of illegal domestic surveillance. There's also the matter of where the reporting might end. At some point, most recruits fill out a SF-86, which provides background information for their security clearance. Would Mr. Schumer like the military to hand over those as well? Compared to recruiter interview forms, the SF-86 is a veritable goldmine of information on past residences, associations and travels.
And while we're on that topic, what about notes from the Defense Investigative Service agents who interview the family and friends of those applying for a clearance? Did we mention that some of the claims made in those interviews are unsubstantiated? Now, imagine all that information making its way into a national database, accessible to legions of bureaucrats and available for all sorts of purposes. Gee, whatever happened to that supposed right to privacy that the left keeps harping about?
If it's any consolation, the Schumer proposal is still a ways from becoming a legal requirement. But don't discount that possibility, since it can be implemented without new legislation. Stroke of the pen, law of the land, as the Clintonistas used to say.
***
ADDENDUM: Hard-core libertarians and the folks at NORML should not interpret this as an endorsement of legalizing drugs. Far from it. We still support the "zero tolerance" policy of the U.S. military and wish the same standard could be applied to military recruits. Unfortunately, the armed services have elected to tolerate certain levels of recreational drug use among prospective enlistees, due to the widespread use of marijuana among those in the primary recruiting cohort (18-25 year-olds).
-
Your Rx or your privacy
The Supreme Court will decide whether states can bar the buying and selling of prescription data.
IMS Health Inc. operates in the shadows of the healthcare industry, gathering data that drug makers can use to sell medications more effectively. The data, however, are taken from the prescriptions that doctors write for their patients. That information is at the heart of a dispute over how far states can go to protect privacy — a dispute that has reached the Supreme Court, and one that could broaden the reach of the 1st Amendment in troubling ways.
IMS and a handful of market research competitors pay pharmacists for the details contained in prescriptions, including the name of the doctor and the patient, the drug prescribed and the dosage. They compile that information into databases that track individual doctors' prescribing habits, replacing patients' names with "de-identified" numbers. Such databases can be valuable to the public, potentially helping to enforce drug laws, find patterns in the spread of disease and spot variations in how medications are used. But the main use — and the one that pays for the databases — is to help pharmaceutical companies persuade physicians to prescribe more of their products.
That's one of the reasons states across the country have proposed or enacted regulations governing prescription data mining. Drug makers hire legions of sales representatives to pitch physicians in person about new products and new applications for older medications. They pay market researchers millions of dollars for information on individual doctors' prescriptions because it helps them find sick people (chronically sick people in particular) who could be treated with their drugs or who are taking their competitors' medications.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get the best in Southern California opinion journalism delivered to your inbox with our Opinion L.A. newsletter. Sign up »
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some doctors object to the disclosure of such arguably private information to drug company sales forces. And some consumer advocates argue persuasively that the marketing inevitably leads physicians to prescribe drugs too frequently, and to prescribe the newer and more expensive drugs that pharmaceutical companies hawk most aggressively. These drugs may have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily the best choice for the patient; the FDA doesn't compare the effectiveness of new drugs against existing therapies.
In light of these concerns, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont each adopted laws restricting the release of information on individual physicians' prescriptions. IMS, other market researchers and drug manufacturers challenged those laws in federal court, claiming that their 1st Amendment rights were violated. The plaintiffs contended that the information provided by market researchers to drug companies and from drug companies to physicians was a form of "speech" that the states could regulate only if there was a compelling state interest and only if they used the least restrictive means to do so. There was no evidence that drug marketing harmed physicians or patients, they argued, so there was no compelling state interest in limiting speech.
The U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the strictures in New Hampshire (and later, Maine) but the 2nd Circuit overturned the law in Vermont. The divergent rulings reflected a split between the courts over whether regulating the sale of such data amounted to a restraint on speech. The 1st Circuit held that New Hampshire's law restricted market research companies' conduct — namely, their ability to aggregate and transfer information for drug-marketing purposes — not their speech. The 2nd Circuit held that Vermont restricted speech by data miners and pharmaceutical companies, but did so without demonstrating a compelling state interest.
This month the Supreme Court agreed to consider Vermont's appeal, and we hope the justices will be guided by the dissent written by 2nd Circuit Judge Debra Ann Livingston. As Livingston noted, pharmacies obtain sensitive information about doctors and prescriptions only because the state orders them to gather it for law enforcement reasons. Otherwise, doctors and patients might insist that the data be kept confidential. That information is every bit as sensitive as a hospital chart or a doctor's notes, and should be subject to equally effective protection.
Just because IMS doesn't supply patients' names to drug companies, that doesn't mean they can't be tracked individually. According to Meredith Jacob of the American University Washington College of Law, the databases assign unique numbers to pharmacies' customers that can be used to follow their prescriptions over time, helping drug makers spot the patients most likely to be customers for their new drugs and market those medicines to their physicians.
What's worse, the data about prescriptions could conceivably be combined with other records to reveal some patients' names. That's because "de-identified" data may provide clues that enable it to be matched against names in other databases. In one example of this technique cited in a brief by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a researcher was able to use public records to name more than a third of the supposedly anonymized victims in Chicago's homicide database.
Drug makers should be able to market their products, but their 1st Amendment rights shouldn't guarantee them access to sensitive data that wouldn't exist but for the government's requirement that doctors and patients disclose it. Many of the public health and safety benefits cited by defenders of prescription data mining can be obtained without revealing prescribers' names to drug company sales reps. If states want to give doctors and their patients more protection against marketers gaining access to that information, they should be able to do so.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
-
BY MARCUS K. GARNER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Someday very soon, if you stroll through Piedmont Park, travel the Downtown Connector, hit one of the bars or restaurants in Midtown or visit the Georgia Dome or Philips Arena, you'll have an invisible companion: the Atlanta Police Department.
This spring, the department will open a video integration center designed to compile and analyze footage from thousands of public and private security cameras throughout the city. Images from as many as 500 cameras in downtown and Midtown are expected to be flowing into the center by mid-summer.
Several metro Atlanta police agencies use cameras to bolster public safety, but the city's new venture, which will integrate data supplied by private entities such as CNN, America's Mart and Midtown Blue as well as public agencies such as the Federal Reserve, MARTA and the Georgia Department of Transportation, represents a whole new level of electronic surveillance.
Atlanta police Chief George Turner pointed to the case of Charles Boyer, gunned down outside a Virginia-Highland apartment building in November, to show what cameras can do. Footage from a security camera, which captured images of men refueling a vehicle similar to one described by witnesses to the shooting, contributed to the arrest five days later of the three men charged with Boyer's murder.
"How successful were we in solving that crime because of the video we had?" Turner asked in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "That's an example of how this will work."
In fact, the technology installed in the new center will be capable of much more, according to David Wilkinson, president of the Atlanta Police Foundation, which funds a camera network operated by the private security agency Midtown Blue.
The foundation raised a half-million dollars to supplement the $2.6 million in federal funds the city will use to build its new center. The federal money came from Homeland Security grants and Justice Department seizure funds.
Wilkinson said the center will use software that can identify suspicious activity and guide officers right to the scene of a crime as it's occurring. In effect, the software will multiply the eyes and ears of the five to seven people per shift who will initially monitor video footage around the clock.
"Monitoring is somewhat of a fallacy," Wilkinson said. "Analytics will help control the cameras."
The software includes a program called "Gun Spotter," which automatically cues up cameras in the vicinity of the sound of gunfire, so dispatchers can get a quick jump on what happened. Other software will send images to the officers' in-car computers and even to the screens of web-enabled smart phones.
"The real goal is to prevent the crime," Wilkinson said. "You do that by setting up police patrols, cameras, things that deter criminal from ever committing crime."
Facial recognition systems, license plate reading and automatic tracking programs also are available, although cities such as Chicago, which has pioneered citywide video surveillance, has reported those technologies are not yet ready for prime time.
Atlanta is modeling its surveillance network after Chicago's, which integrates data from a 10,000-camera network. This week, the Illinois ACLU issued a report demanding a moratorium on further expansion of Chicago's system on the grounds that it represents an unacceptable threat to personal privacy.
"Cameras do not deter crime, they just displace it," said Adam Schwartz, a lawyer for the Illinois ACLU. "It's difficult to see where the benefits of using cameras outweighs the costs --- including a vast amount of money, potential privacy invasion and a potential chilling of free speech."
With the promise of integrated surveillance capabilities in the hands of Atlanta police, Georgia's ACLU is voicing similar concerns.
"We always hope for strong oversight and regulation to make sure there are no violations of privacy," Georgia ACLU attorney Chara Fisher Jackson said. "But until we see it [at work], we won't say what actions we might take."
Greg McGraw, who lives in East Cobb and works in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, isn't too worried about police looking over his shoulder.
"People expose themselves so much on Facebook, privacy is a joke," McGraw said. "If it's going to make people safer, I'm for it."
Megan Larion, who lives in Buckhead and manages a Virginia-Highland apartment complex, is OK with the cameras, too, especially when she thinks about Boyer's slaying.
"I guess those folks who think these cameras mark the end of the world will be upset, but that's all," Larion said. "I think it's a good thing. It'll improve our industry, and people will feel more safe."
For a preview of how Atlanta's proposed network will function, you just have to look at the nearly 50 video screens that flicker above the front office of Midtown Blue. When someone calls in to report suspicious activity, a video dispatcher can remotely pan, tilt or zoom any one of the $13,000 cameras, tracking the suspect and directing an officer to the spot.
"When you have a dispatcher sitting here, you can actually catch crimes before they occur," said Col. Wayne Mock, a retired Atlanta policeman who manages Midtown Blue.
If a crime does occur, the cameras make excellent witnesses, he said. "The video tells you what actually happened and doesn't get excited like the average witness might."
Other local police agencies also are using cameras to bolster the impact of their officers.
"We were convinced that this was an effective force multiplier," said Lilburn police Chief John Davidson.
But cities in other states have encountered glitches. Cincinnati is currently on its second video surveillance network; the first system, started in 2005, proved ineffective. And Orlando's system failed to deliver on its promise when the city ran short of funds for the necessary software.
In Chicago, even with cameras on every corner, as Mayor Richard M. Daley famously said he wants, video has its limits, said Jonathan Lewin, managing deputy director of the city's emergency management office.
"It provides an overall positive effect if you can saturate the area," Lewin said. "But it's not going to provide the panacea that will completely eliminate crime."
-
Prepare To Give Up All Private Data For Any Gold Purchase Over $100
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/18/2011 20:59 -0500
www.zerohedge.com
A week ago, when we reported on a move by the Dutch central bank that
ordered a pension fund to forcibly reduce its gold holdings, we speculated
that "this latest gold confiscation equivalent event is most certainly
coming to a banana republic near you." And while we got the Banana republic
right, the event that we are about to describe is not necessarily identical.
It is much worse. A bill proposed in the State of Washington (House Bill
1716), by representatives Asay, Hurst, Klippert, Pearson, and Miloscia,
whose alleged purpose is to regulate secondhand gold dealers, seeks to
capture "the name, date of birth, sex, height, weight, race, and address and
telephone number of the person with whom the transaction is made" or said
otherwise, of every purchaser of gold in the state of Washington.
Furthermore, if passed, Bill 1716 will record "a complete description of the
property pledged, bought, or consigned, including the brand name, serial
number, model number or name, any initials or engraving, size, pattern, and
color or stone or stones" and of course price. But the kicker: if a
transaction is mode for an amount over $100, which means one tenth of an
ounce of golds, also required will be a "signature, photo, and fingerprint
of the person with whom the transaction is made." In other words, very soon
Washington state will know more about you than you know about yourself, if
you dare to buy any gold object worth more than a C-note. How this proposal
is supposed to protect consumers against vulture gold dealers we don't quite
get. Hopefully someone will explain it to us. We do, however, get how
Americans will part with any and all privacy if they were to exchange fiat
for physical. And in a police state like America, this will likely not be
taken lightly, thereby killing the gold trade should the proposed Bill pass,
and be adopted elsewhere.
-
Great.....
-
By JULIA ANGWIN and EMILY STEEL
As the surreptitious tracking of Internet users becomes more aggressive and widespread, tiny start-ups and technology giants alike are pushing a new product: privacy.
Companies including Microsoft Corp., McAfee Inc.—and even some online-tracking companies themselves—are rolling out new ways to protect users from having their movements monitored online. Some are going further and starting to pay people a commission every time their personal details are used by marketing companies.
"Data is a new form of currency," says Shane Green, chief executive of a Washington start-up, Personal Inc. , which has raised $7.6 million for a business that aims to help people profit from providing their personal information to advertisers.
The Wall Street Journal's year-long What They Know investigation into online tracking has exposed a fast-growing network of hundreds of companies that collect highly personal details about Internet users—their online activities, political views, health worries, shopping habits, financial situations and even, in some cases, their real names—to feed the $26 billion U.S. online-advertising industry.
In the first nine months of last year, spending on Internet advertising rose nearly 14%, while the overall ad industry only grew about 6%, according to data from PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP and WPP PLC's Kantar Media.
Testing the new privacy marketplace are people like Giles Sequeira, a London real-estate developer who recently began selling his own personal data. "I'm not paranoid about privacy," he says. But as he learned more, he says, he became concerned about how his data was getting used.
People "have no idea where it is going to end up," he says.
So in December, Mr. Sequeira became one of the first customers of London start-up Allow Ltd. , which offers to sell people's personal information on their behalf, and give them 70% of the sale. Mr. Sequeira has already received one payment of £5.56 ($8.95) for letting Allow tell a credit-card company he is shopping for new plastic.
"I wouldn't give my car to a stranger" for free, Mr. Sequeira says, "So why do I do that with my personal data?"
As people are becoming more aware of the value of their data, some are seeking to protect it, and sometimes sell it. In January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, executives and academics gathered to discuss how to turn personal data into an "asset class" by giving people the right to manage and sell it on their own behalf.
"We are trying to shift the focus from purely privacy to what we call property rights," says Michele Luzi, a director at consulting firm Bain & Co. who led the Davos discussion.
Allow, the company that paid Mr. Sequeira, is just one of nearly a dozen start-ups hoping to profit from the nascent privacy market. Several promise to pay people a commission on the sale of their data. Others offer free products to block online tracking, in the hopes of later selling users other services—such as disposable phone numbers or email addresses that make personal tracking tougher. Still others sell paid services, such as removing people's names from marketing databases.
"Entrepreneurs smell opportunity," says Satya Patel, venture capitalist at Battery Ventures, which led a group of investors that poured $8 million in June into a start-up called SafetyWeb , which helps parents monitor their children's activities on social-networking sites and is rolling out a new privacy-protection service for adults, myID.com .
For the lightly regulated tracking industry, a big test of the new privacy marketplace is whether it will quiet the growing chorus of critics calling for tougher government oversight. Lawmakers this month introduced two separate privacy bills in Congress, and in December the Obama administration called for an online-privacy "bill of rights." The Federal Trade Commission is pushing for a do-not-track system inspired by the do-not-call registry that blocks phone calls from telemarketers.
The industry is hustling on several fronts to respond to regulatory concerns. Last week, Microsoft endorsed a do-not-track system. Microsoft also plans to add a powerful anti-tracking tool to the next version of its Web-browsing software, Internet Explorer 9. That's a reversal: Microsoft's earlier decision to remove a similar privacy feature from Explorer was the subject of a Journal article last year.
The online-ad industry itself is also rolling out new privacy services in hopes of heading off regulation. Most let users opt out of seeing targeted ads, though they generally don't prevent tracking.
The privacy market has been tested before, during the dot-com boom around 2000, a time when online tracking was just being born. A flurry of online-privacy-related start-ups sprang up but only a few survived due to limited consumer appetite.
As recently as 2008, privacy was so hard to sell that entrepreneur Rob Shavell says he avoided even using the word when he pitched investors on his start-up, Abine Inc. , which blocks online tracking. Today, he says, Abine uses the word "privacy" again, and has received more than 30 unsolicited approaches from investors in the past six months.
It's rarely a coincidence when you see Web ads for products that match your interests. WSJ's Christina Tsuei explains how advertisers use cookies to track your online habits.
In June, another company, TRUSTe, raised $12 million from venture capitalists to expand its privacy services. At the same time, Reputation.com Inc. raised $15 million and tripled its investments in new privacy initiatives including a service that removes people's names from online databases and a tool to let people encrypt their Facebook posts.
"It's just night and day out there," says Abine's Mr. Shavell.
Online advertising companies—many of which use online tracking to target ads—are also jumping into the privacy-protection business. AOL, one of largest online trackers, recently ramped up promotion of privacy services that it sells.
And in December, enCircle Media, an ad agency that works with tracking companies, invested in the creation of a privacy start-up, IntelliProtect . Last month IntelliProtect launched a $8.95-a-month privacy service that will, among other things, prevent people from seeing some online ads based on tracking data.
In its marketing material, IntelliProtect doesn't disclose its affiliation with the ad company, enCircle Media, that invested in it. When contacted by the Journal, IntelliProtect said it would never give or sell customer data to other entities, including its parent companies.
A cofounder of Allow, Justin Basini, also traces his roots to the ad industry. Mr. Basini came up with the idea for his new business when working as head of brand marketing for Capital One Europe. He says he was amazed at the "huge amounts" of data the credit-card companies had amassed about individuals.
But the data didn't produce great results, he says. The response rate to Capital One's targeted mailings was 1-in-100, he says—vastly better than untargeted mailings, but still "massively inefficient." Mr. Basini says. "So I thought, 'Why not try to incentivize the customer to become part of the process?"
People feel targeted ads online are "spooky," he says, because people aren't aware of how much personal data is being traded. His proposed solution: Ask people permission before showing them ads targeted at their personal interests, and base the ads only on information people agree to provide.
In 2009, Mr. Basini left Capital One and teamed up with cofounder Howard Huntley, a technologist. He raised £440,000 ($708,400) from family, friends and a few investors, and launched Allow in December. The company has attracted 4,000 customers, he says.
Mr. Basini says his strategy is to first make individuals' data scarce, so it can become more valuable when he sells it later. To do that, Allow removes its customers from the top 12 marketing databases in the U.K., which Mr. Basini says account for 90% of the market. Allow also lists its customers in the official U.K. registries for people who don't want to receive telemarketing or postal solicitations.
Currently, Allow operates only in the U.K., which (unlike the U.S.) has a law that requires companies to honor individuals' requests to be removed from marketing databases.
Then, Mr. Basini asks his customers to create a profile that can contain their name, address, employment, number of kids, hobbies and shopping intent—in other words, lists of things they're thinking about buying. Customers can choose to grant certain marketers permission to send them offers, in return for a 70% cut of the price marketers pay to reach them. Allow says it has finalized a deal with one marketer and has five more deals it hopes to close soon.
Mr. Basini says Allow tries to prevent people from "gaming" the system by watching for people who state an intention to buy lots of things, but don't follow through.
Because Allow's data comes from people who have explicitly stated their interest in being contacted about specific products, it can command a higher price than data gathered by stealthier online-tracking technologies. For instance, online-tracking companies routinely sell pieces of information about people's Web-browsing habits for less than a penny per person. By comparison, Allow says it sells access to Mr. Sequeira for £5 to £10 per marketer.
Mr. Sequeira, the London real-estate executive, says that after he filled out an "intention" to get a new credit card, he received a £15.56 credit in his Allow account: a £10 signing fee plus a £5.56 payment from the sale of his data to a credit-card marketer. So far, he says, he hasn't received a card offer from the company.
"I don't think it's going to make a life-changing amount of money," says Mr. Sequeira. But, he says he enjoyed the little windfall enough that he is now letting Allow offer his data to other advertisers. "I can see this becoming somewhat addictive."
Write to Julia Angwin at julia.angwin@wsj.com and Emily Steel at emily.steel@wsj.com
-
By JULIA ANGWIN
(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)
Sens. John McCain and John Kerry are circulating proposed legislation to create an "online privacy bill of rights," according to people familiar with the situation, a sign of bipartisan support for efforts to curb the Internet-tracking industry.
John McCain
.Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, are backing a bill that would require companies to seek a person's permission to share data about him with outsiders. It would also give people the right to see the data collected on them. The bill is expected to be introduced ahead of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing next Wednesday on online privacy.
The move comes amid widening scrutiny of the tracking industry. In the past year, The Wall Street Journal's "What They Know" series has revealed that popular websites install thousands of tracking technologies on people's computers without their knowledge, feeding an industry that gathers and sells information on their finances, political leanings and religious interests, among other things.
In another sign of Washington's efforts to regulate tracking, the Obama administration is moving to fill two key jobs related to privacy policy. People familiar with the matter said the administration is in talks with Jules Polonetsky, who currently heads the Future of Privacy Forum, an industry-funded think tank, to run a new privacy office in the Commerce Department. Mr. Polonetsky was previously chief privacy officer at online-advertising companies AOL Inc. and DoubleClick, now part of Google Inc.
John Kerry
.Daniel Weitzner, a Commerce Department official who pushed for creation of the agency's new privacy office, is expected to become deputy chief technology officer in the White House, where he would oversee a privacy task force, the people familiar with the matter said.
Sen. McCain's endorsement of privacy legislation adds a prominent Republican voice to the issue, indicating that concern over Internet tracking crosses party lines.
In December, the Federal Trade Commission urged Congress to authorize creation of a "do-not-track" system, modeled after the do-not-call list that governs telemarketers. Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, introduced such a bill in January.
The draft Kerry-McCain bill would create the nation's first comprehensive privacy law, covering personal-data gathering across all industries. That was a key recommendation of a recent Commerce Department's report, developed in part by Sen. Kerry's brother Cameron, the department's general counsel. Current laws cover only the use of certain types of personal data, such as financial and medical information.
Experience WSJ professional
Editors' Deep Dive: Five Aspects of Online Privacy
SC MAGAZINE
DOJ Pushes for ISPs to Retain User Logs
DMNews
Marketers Step Up Self-Regulation Practices
The National Law Journal
Privacy and Online Data Collection at a Crossroads Access thousands of business sources not available on the free web. Learn More The Kerry-McCain bill would cover data ranging from names and addresses to fingerprints and unique IDs assigned to individuals' cellphones or computers. It would also establish a program to certify companies with high privacy standards. Those companies would be allowed to sell personal data to outsiders without seeking permission in each instance.
A spokeswoman for Sen. McCain confirmed that the two senators were "in discussion" but said "we don't have anything to announce at this time." A spokeswoman for Sen. Kerry declined to comment.
Last week, Florida Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns said he would introduce draft privacy legislation soon, although his approach would largely allow the industry to continue many current practices.
Speaking at the Technology Policy Institute, Rep. Stearns said his proposal would allow the FTC to approve a five-year self-regulatory program that would encourage companies to offer more information to consumers about how they were being tracked. "The goal of the legislation is to empower consumers to make their own privacy choices," he said.
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629104576190911145462284.html#ixzz1GAR6fsIa
-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/17/online-persona-management_n_837153.html
-
White House wants new copyright law crackdown
by Declan McCullagh
The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making "illegal streaming" of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers.
In a 20-page white paper (PDF), the Obama administration called on the U.S. Congress to fix "deficiencies that could hinder enforcement" of intellectual property laws.
Victoria Espinel, the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, with Vice President Joe Biden during an event last year.
(Credit: Whitehouse.gov)
The report was prepared by Victoria Espinel, the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator who received Senate confirmation in December 2009, and represents a broad tightening of many forms of intellectual property law including ones that deal with counterfeit pharmaceuticals and overseas royalties for copyright holders. (See CNET's report last month previewing today's white paper.)
Some of the highlights:
• The White House is concerned that "illegal streaming of content" may not be covered by criminal law, saying "questions have arisen about whether streaming constitutes the distribution of copyrighted works." To resolve that ambiguity, it wants a new law to "clarify that infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony in appropriate circumstances."
• Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move "would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses."
• Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's generally illegal to distribute hardware or software--such as the DVD-decoding software Handbrake available from a server in France--that can "circumvent" copy protection technology. The administration is proposing that if Homeland Security seizes circumvention devices, it be permitted to "inform rightholders," "provide samples of such devices," and assist "them in bringing civil actions."
The term "fair use" does not appear anywhere in the report. But it does mention Web sites like The Pirate Bay, which is hosted in Sweden, when warning that "foreign-based and foreign-controlled Web sites and Web services raise particular concerns for U.S. enforcement efforts." (See previous coverage of a congressional hearing on overseas sites.)
The usual copyright hawks, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, applauded the paper, which grew out of a so-called joint strategic plan that Vice President Biden and Espinel announced in June 2010.
Rob Calia, a senior director at the Chamber's Global Intellectual Property Center, said we "strongly support the white paper's call for Congress to clarify that criminal copyright infringement through unauthorized streaming, is a felony. We know both the House and Senate are looking at this issue and encourage them to work closely with the administration and other stakeholders to combat this growing threat."
In October 2008, President Bush signed into law the so-called Pro IP ACT, which created Espinel's position and increased penalties for infringement, after expressing its opposition to an earlier version.
Unless legislative proposals--like one nearly a decade ago implanting strict copy controls in digital devices--go too far, digital copyright tends not to be a particularly partisan topic. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, near-universally disliked by programmers and engineers for its anti-circumvention section, was approved unanimously in the U.S. Senate.
At the same time, Democratic politicians tend to be a bit more enthusiastic about the topic. Biden was a close Senate ally of copyright holders, and President Obama picked top copyright industry lawyers for Justice Department posts. Last year, Biden warned that "piracy is theft."
No less than 78 percent of political contributions from Hollywood went to Democrats in 2008, which is broadly consistent with the trend for the last two decades, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20043421-281.html#ixzz1I79UjHQe
-
VERY interesting subject matter to me!!! Cindy and I live an Sisyphean struggle on a regular basis with sites that pirate our DVDs. :x :x :x
-
I think it's obvious that the "war against copyright infringement" is a failure and the only option is legalization.
:evil:
-
Very witty , , , and devoid of actual content :-P :lol:
-
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/129568/20110401/google-goggles-face-recognition-app-privacy-smartphone-mobile.htm
Friday, April 1, 2011 7:46 AM EDT
Privacy concerns plague Google Goggles facial recognition
By IBTimes Staff Reporter
As privacy concerns plague the much-anticipated Google Goggles facial recognition feature, the internet giant has asserted that it is "still working" on the smartphone app. The company's statement comes after a media report on the upcoming Google Goggle facial recognition app prompted tech observers raise questions on how the app would compromise on privacy.
CNN reported Thursday that Google was working on an app that would identify people's faces. The mobile application would allow users to snap pictures of people's faces in order to access their personal information, a director for the project said this week, the report said.
In response to the report on the upcoming app, Venture Beat argued Friday that Google's face-recognition app "sounds great for stalkers."
"Tech companies keep on creating great new technologies that raise a lot of privacy concerns. The latest example is Google's upcoming mobile app that will identify people's faces in order to access their personal information," the report noted.
-
:-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
-
With the news that millions of email addresses have been compromised, my employer sent out the following links for info on so-called "spear phishing."
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/april09/spearphishing_040109.html
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci1134829,00.html
https://www.microsoft.com/australia/athome/security/email/spear_phishing.mspx
-
Applying the Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment to Disclosure of Stored Records
Orin Kerr • April 5, 2011 4:54 pm
I’ve blogged a few times about United States v. Maynard, the controversial D.C. Circuit case holding that over time, GPS surveillance begins to be a search that requires a warrant. Maynard introduced a novel mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment: Although individual moments of surveillance were not searches, when you added up the surveillance over time, all the non-searches taken together amounted to a search. The obvious question is, just how much is enough to trigger a search? At what does point the Constitution require the police to get a warrant?
This issue recently came up in a court order application before Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in Brooklyn seeking historical cell-site location for two cell phones used by a particular suspect. Regular readers will be familiar with Judge Orenstein: He is a very civil libertarian judge who has a strong sense of his own role, and he has concluded that Maynard is correct. In the most recent case, In the Matter of an Application of the United States of America for an Order Authorizing the Release of Historical Cell-Site Information, 2011 WL 679925 (Feb 16, 2011), Judge Orenstein tries to apply Maynard to determine if a particular discosure of information is protected by the Fourth Amendment under the Maynard mosaic theory. In the case, the government sought a court order under 18 U.S.C. 2703(d) for the cell-site records of two phones used by the same person. For one phone, the records were sought for one three-day period and a separate six-day period weeks later, and for the second phone, the records were sought for a twelve-day period several months later. The question was, did these records, viewed collectively, create a mosaic that triggers the Fourth Amendment?
In an earlier case, Judge Orenstein had concluded that the records of a 58-day period of a single cell phone did create a sufficient mosiac as to create a reasonable expectation of privacy under Maynard, such that a warrant was required to release that information. But in this case, Judge Orenstein concludes that the records sought are not protected by a reasonable expectation of privacy — and no warrant is required — because the records if released would not amount to enough of a mosaic to trigger Maynard. As a result, Orenstein agrees to issue the order without first finding probable cause. According to the opinion, here’s the reason why the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply:
The instant application requires me to consider the point at which a request for location tracking information is extensive enough to trigger the warrant requirement.. . . The rationale in Maynard, in essence, was that a month’s worth of location tracking provides an intimate picture of the subject’s life, and one that he does not meaningfully subject to public exposure, in part because sustained physical surveillance over such a period is effectively impossible.
The Maynard court took pains to distinguish the case before it from the circumstances of United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983), in which the Supreme Court decided that the use of a beeper to track a single trip on public roads did not implicate the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. Maynard, 615 F.3d at 556. It did not attempt to define the length of time over which location tracking technology must be sustained to trigger the warrant requirement. I recognize that any such line-drawing is, at least to some extent, arbitrary. . . .
I do not mean to suggest that I can or should define the minimum duration that transforms the kind of discrete surveillance effort at issue in Knotts into the sustained location tracking that triggers the warrant requirement under Maynard. I venture no further than the appellate court that decided Maynard. In that case, the government sustained its GPS-based surveillance for one month. . . .
And while the period at issue here — a total of 21 days — is not necessarily so much shorter than the month at issue in Maynard to compel the conclusion that the same reasoning does not apply, there is a further complicating factor here. The government does not seek location tracking records for a single mobile phone over a continuous period of 21 days; instead, it seeks records for one telephone for a three-day period and a separate six-day period weeks later, and also the records of a different telephone (albeit one allegedly used by the same investigative subject) for a twelve-day period several months later. Even if it would be just as impractical for the government to conduct physical surveillance in lieu of electronic tracking for such shorter periods, I cannot assume that the information gleaned over such shorter periods, separated by breaks of weeks or months, would necessarily be as revealing as the sustained month-long monitoring at issue in Maynard.
Because I conclude that the Fourth Amendment does not bar application of the SCA in the circumstances of this case, I grant the government’s application
To my mind, this opinion reveals the absurdity of Maynard’s mosaic theory. The analysis is all “look ma, no hands.” No one knows where the line is, or even what the line is. Sure, you could just count days of surveillance: perhaps 30 days triggers a warrant but 29 days doesn’t. But there is no reason the access to records has to be continuous. The government can skip around days, or get records from a few days here and a few days there. Who can tell how much is enough? No one knows what is revealing, because what is revealing depends on what the records actually say — and no one but the phone companies know what they say. So Judge Orenstein has to wing it, announcing that “he cannot assume” that the information would be revealing because it has breaks in time. But it’s not clear to me why the break in time matters: It’s the same net amount of data collected, so I don’t know why it matters if it was collected all at once or over several discrete periods. And how much of a break matters? If 21 days is too long, is 21 days with a one-day break enough? How about a 3-day break? One week? No one knows, it seems, not even the judge himself.
And of course, as soon as courts are clear as to where the line may be, the police just have to go right up to it to avoid the warrant requirement: They’ll do just shy of what the courts say requires a warrant. And presumably the poilice will then try to get multiple orders over time, meaning that judges will have to develop a jurisprudence of how multiple order applications (perhaps from different law enforcement groups) accumulate pieces of the mosaic. For example, if 30 days is too long, but 15 days with a one-week break is okay, the police can try to get the equivalent of 30 days of records in two parts — 15 days at a time, each with a one-week break. Imagine that there is a different magistrate on duty when the second order is obtained. Does the second judge need to know of the prior order, so he can properly accumulate the days of surveillance and realize that the break in time of one order is filled by the second order so that the collection of the two orders amounts to a search? If so, are the contents of the first order supressible, even though it alone didn’t amount to a search, on the theory that the collection of the first and second order together amounted to a search, and that they should be viewed together even though the orders were obtained at different times?
There are some readers who will say that the cause of justice sometimes requires hard decisions, and that if judges need to make arbitrary calls like that, then that is what we pay them to do in order to enforce the Constitution. But as I see it, the oddity of the inquiries called for by the Maynard mosaic theory shows why it is not part of the Constitution at all. In Fourth Amendment law, the lawfulness of governent conduct has always been viewed discretely: Each government act is either a search or it is not a search. Under Maynard, conduct can be a non-search if viewed in isolation but a search if viewed in context — but there is no guide to tell how much context is proper. If you want to say that certain conduct is a search, then just be direct and say it’s a search. That’s fine. But a mosaic theory, in which non-searches become searches if grouped a particular way, has no proper place in Fourth Amendment law.
http://volokh.com/2011/04/05/applying-the-mosaic-theory-of-the-fourth-amendment-to-disclosure-of-stored-records/
-
Privacy 'bill of rights' exempts government agencies
by Declan McCullagh
Two U.S. senators introduced sweeping privacy legislation today that they promise will "establish a framework to protect the personal information of all Americans."
There is, however, one feature of the bill (PDF) sponsored by senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) that has gone relatively unnoticed: it doesn't apply to data mining, surveillance, or any other forms of activities that governments use to collect and collate Americans' personal information.
At a press conference in Washington, D.C., McCain said the privacy bill of rights will protect the "fundamental right of American citizens, that is the right to privacy." And the first sentence of the legislation proclaims that "personal privacy is worthy of protection through appropriate legislation."
But the measure applies only to companies and some nonprofit groups, not to the federal, state, and local police agencies that have adopted high-tech surveillance technologies including cell phone tracking, GPS bugs, and requests to Internet companies for users' personal information--in many cases without obtaining a search warrant from a judge.
"What's a bill of rights if it doesn't provide rights against the government?" asks Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute.
It also doesn't apply to government agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, the Census Bureau, and the IRS, which collect vast amounts of data on American citizens.
The Department of Veterans Affairs suffered a massive security breach in 2006 when an unencrypted laptop with data on millions of veterans was stolen. A government report last year listed IRS security and privacy vulnerabilities. The government of Texas yesterday revealed that it disclosed the personal information of 3.5 million citizens, including Social Security numbers. Even the Census Bureau has, in the past, shared information with law enforcement from its supposedly confidential files.
Another feature missing from Kerry and McCain's bill of rights: a strict requirement that would force federal agencies to notify American citizens in the event of a data breach.
In 2007, the Bush White House asked agencies (PDF) to develop breach notification rules. But there are no civil or criminal penalties if violated, and agencies are allowed to make their own decisions as to whether a breach has generated sufficient "harm" to warrant notification--a self-policing measure that gives them a strong incentive to downplay any potential ill effects.
Making the governmental exemption more pointed is the fact that the senators' press conference comes as the Obama Justice Department is lobbying for broader surveillance powers and trying to head off pro-privacy reforms.
In January, the Justice Department announced that investigations "are being frustrated" because no law currently exists to force Internet providers to keep track of what their customers are doing. A month later, the FBI outlined its push for expanded Internet wiretapping authority.
Last week, the Justice Department said it opposed proposals--backed by AT&T, Google, Microsoft, eBay, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Americans for Tax Reform--to protect Americans' privacy by requiring a search warrant to access online files and track Americans' locations. Then, on Friday, the Justice Department renewed its opposition to being required to use a search warrant to access the Twitter accounts of Wikileaks volunteers.
"Kerry and McCain are saying, 'Do as I say, not as I do,'" Harper says. "If they want to lead on the privacy issue, they'll lead by getting the federal government's house in order."
Instead, their legislation would regulate only commercial and nonprofit use of information that's personally identifiable, with exceptions for information "obtained from public records that is not merged" with other data and information "reported in public media."
The measure shares many features with similar, unsuccessful bills introduced last year: Personally identifiable information is defined as including a first and last name, a residential mailing address, a Web cookie, an e-mail address, a telephone number, biometric data, and so on. "Sensitive" information is a subset and includes health records, religious information, or data that could lead to "economic or physical harm."
In general, personal information can only be used for a list of purposes specified in the legislation, including processing transactions, certain types of marketing, "reasonably expected" uses, and responding to police and other governmental requests. Violations would be punished by the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC would also be given one year to set up a "safe harbor" program, which would be administered by approved non-governmental organizations. Companies that participate in the safe harbor, as long as it includes similar data use restrictions, would be "exempt" from the more restrictive aspects of the bill.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20053367-281.html#ixzz1JQeDKrJP
-
The Supreme Court has never heard a case challenging the government’s authority to search a computer. It is time, after a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit opened the way last month to vast government intrusion. It ruled that, without good reason to suspect evidence of a crime, border agents could seize a laptop and open a dragnet search of files, e-mails and Web sites visited.
The majority pats itself on the back for stopping “far short of ‘anything goes’ at the border,” since any intrusion must not violate the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures.” But by not requiring the government to have a reason for seizing a computer or to say what it is searching for, a dissent notes, the majority “allows the government to set its own limits.” In other words, pretty much anything goes.
The government asked the court to create this precedent, though in this case it had genuine grounds for suspicion. When the defendant crossed from Mexico into Arizona, his criminal record as a child molester came up in a database. When the government looked for child pornography, it found plenty on his laptop. The government has a duty to secure the borders against this and other kinds of illegal material, including drugs and weapons.
Fourth Amendment law already gives border agents huge leeway, allowing them to search travelers and their belongings, without a warrant, proof of probable cause or suspicion of illegal activity. The Ninth Circuit decided that computers could be searched on site as part of those belongings. But this ruling allows the government to hold a laptop for weeks or even months, transport it away from the border and subject it to an intensive search.
The difference between the search of a briefcase’s physical space and a laptop’s cyberspace — a window into the user’s mind — is profound. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, the Fourth Amendment must protect just such “privacies of life.” It was 1928 when he warned that “ways may some day be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences.”
Searching a computer is a major invasion of privacy — one that may be necessary to protect the country’s security. But there still must be limits and protections. It is now up to the Supreme Court to establish those limits.
-
How Well-Trained Does A Drug-Sniffing Dog Need to Be Before a Positive Alert Creates Probable Cause?
Orin Kerr • April 26, 2011 6:02 pm
Under the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment, the police can search a car without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe there is contraband inside it. And under Illinois v. Caballes, the use of a drug-sniffing dog to alert for the presence of drugs in a car is not a Fourth Amendment search. As a result, the police often bring out the dogs to a traffic stop and see if the dog alerts: Under the Fourth Amendment, the police can search the car if the dog’s positive alert amounts to probable cause. But this raises a question: Just how well-trained does a dog need to be before its alert will trigger probable cause? And how do you know how reliable the dog is? In just the last week, I’ve noticed an interesting split emerge on the question.
First, last Friday, the Tenth Circuit adopted the view that an up-to-date certification of the dog’s prowess at finding drugs is enough to satisfy the requisite level of reliability, at least if the certifying authority isn’t challenged. The case is United States v. Ludwig (Gorsuch, J., joined by Judge Murphy and Judge Tymkovich). From the opinion:
t surely goes without saying that a drug dog’s alert establishes probable cause only if that dog is reliable. See id. at 1283. But none of this means we mount a full-scale statistical inquisition into each dog’s history. Instead, courts typically rely on the dog’s certification as proof of its reliability. See id.; United States v. Kennedy, 131 F.3d 1371, 1378 (10th Cir.1997) (“[W]ith a canine, the reliability should come from the fact that the dog is trained and annually certified to perform a physical skill.”) (quotation omitted). After all, it is safe to assume that canine professionals are better equipped than judges to say whether an individual dog is up to snuff. And beyond this, a dog’s credentials provide a bright-line rule for when officers may rely on the dog’s alerts—a far improvement over requiring them to guess whether the dog’s performance will survive judicial scrutiny after the fact. Of course, if a credentialing organization proved to be a sham, its certification would no longer serve as proof of reliability. But the judicial task, we hold, is so limited: to assessing the reliability of the credentialing organization, not individual dogs. And in this case there is no suggestion that the California Narcotic Canine Association, the organization that credentialed the drug dog in this case, is all smoke and mirrors. [FN: This is not to say that a dog’s alerts are necessarily unreliable just because the dog lacks an acceptable certification. An uncertified dog’s accuracy could still, in theory at least, be established by examining its training history and record for reliability. Our point is that this is a needless exercise when, as here, the dog has been certified by an organization whose bona fides are unchallenged.]
The Tenth Circuit also noted that while probable cause isn’t and even shouldn’t be a numerical concept — citing some dubious scholarship along the way — even if probable cause were to be treated as a numerical concept, the evidence in that case was enough that the dog was reliable:
[T]he dog’s records—spanning some 200 pages in the record and covering 7 years’ worth of data—reveal that its alerts have identified a seizable quantity of drugs . . . 58% of the time. . . . While we hesitate to get into the business of affixing figures on probable cause, if we were pushed to do so we would hold this to be enough. After all, probable cause doesn’t require an officer’s suspicion about the presence of contraband to be “more likely true than false.” Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 742 (1983); United States v. Padilla, 819 F.2d 952, 962 (10th Cir. 1987); see also United States v. Garcia, 179 F.3d 265, 269 (5th Cir. 1999) (“[T]he requisite ‘fair probability’ is something more than a bare suspicion, but need not reach the fifty percent mark.”) . . . .
Contrast the Tenth Circuit’s analysis with a new opinion of the Florida Supreme Court, handed down last Thursday, Harris v. State. Harris specifically rejects the view that an up-to-date certification of the dog is enough:
[W]e hold that evidence that the dog has been trained and certified to detect narcotics, standing alone, is not sufficient to establish the dog‘s reliability for purposes of determining probable cause— especially since training and certification in this state are not standardized and thus each training and certification program may differ with no meaningful way to assess them.
Accordingly, we conclude that to meet its burden of establishing that the officer had a reasonable basis for believing the dog to be reliable in order to establish probable cause, the State must present the training and certification records, an explanation of the meaning of the particular training and certification of that dog, field performance records, and evidence concerning the experience and training of the officer handling the dog, as well as any other objective evidence known to the officer about the dog‘s reliability in being able to detect the presence of illegal substances within the vehicle. To adopt the contrary view that the burden is on the defendant to present evidence of the factors other than certification and training in order to demonstrate that the dog is unreliable would be contrary to the well-established proposition that the burden is on the State to establish probable cause for a warrantless search. In addition, since all of the records and evidence are in the possession of the State, to shift the burden to the defendant to produce evidence of the dog‘s unreliability is unwarranted and unduly burdensome.
[T]he fact that the dog has been trained and certified is simply not enough to establish probable cause to search the interior of the vehicle and the person. We first note that there is no uniform standard in this state or nationwide for an acceptable level of training, testing, or certification for drug-detection dogs. . . .
In the absence of a uniform standard, the reliability of the dog cannot be established by demonstrating only that a canine is trained and certified. “imply characterizing a dog a ‘trained‘ an ‘certified‘ imparts scant information about what the dog has been conditioned to do or not to do, or how successfully.” Matheson, 870 So. 2d at 14. In other words, whether a dog has been sufficiently trained and certified must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. . . .
[A] necessary part of the totality of the circumstances analysis in a given case regarding the dog‘s reliability is an evaluation of the evidence concerning whether the dog in the past has falsely alerted, indicating that the dog is not well-trained, or whether the alerts indicate a dog who is alerting on a consistent basis to residual odors, which do not indicate that drugs are present in the vehicle. Accordingly, evidence of the dog‘s performance history in the field—and the significance of any incidents where the dog alerted without contraband being found—is part of a court‘s evaluation of the dog‘s reliability under a totality of the circumstances analysis.8 In particular, when assessing the factors bearing on the dog‘s reliability, it is important to include, as part of a complete evaluation, how often the dog has alerted in the field without illegal contraband having been found.
Is this dog going to sniff its way to the Supreme Court? Perhaps. Stay tuned.
http://volokh.com/2011/04/26/how-well-trained-does-a-drug-sniffing-dog-need-to-be-before-a-positive-alert-creates-probable-cause/
-
Bin Laden’s Revenge
By Randall Holcombe
Tuesday May 3, 2011 at 12:17:08 PM PDT
I just returned from a conference. The guy sitting next to me on the plane had with him a laptop computer, an iPad, an iPod, and a phone. Yep, four “portable electronic devices.” I figured the guy was probably a terrorist. Because they keep announcing it to potential terrorists on aircraft, I know that portable electronic devices can interfere with the aircraft’s navigation system. And this guy had four of them.
Now that bin Laden has been killed some have conjectured that al Qaeda will initiate some retaliation, and they probably would want to strike quickly. Targeting aircraft would be difficult because of the heavy security already in place. For example, someone wanting to bring down an aircraft using toothpaste would have a difficult time because the TSA prohibits carrying toothpaste, except in extremely small quantities, on aircraft.
So, you’d have to think that anyone wanting to initiate a terrorist attack with toothpaste, shampoo, mouthwash, or soft drinks would have a very difficult time getting those dangerous and banned items onto an aircraft. The big loophole in all this is portable electronic devices which, despite repeated announcements about their danger to aircraft, are still allowed on board.
How hard would it be, for example, for al Qaeda to book a dozen operatives onto a flight, all of whom had four portable electronic devices like my recent seat-mate, and then when below 10,000 feet, to all turn them on at once? That would be 48 portable electronic devices, which would cripple the aircraft’s navigation system and bring the aircraft down. Don’t need box cutters. Don’t need toothpaste. It can be done with something the TSA routinely lets through checkpoints, even as the flight attendants announce on every flight how dangerous they are.
Skeptical readers will argue that despite these announcements, portable electronic devices pose no threat to aircraft navigation, and perceptive passengers will note that even as the airline crews announce the dangers of these devices on every flight, the airlines have even started selling in-flight internet service (above 10,000 feet), so we can all fire up our portable electronic devices and surf the web rather than focusing on the fact that we are hurling along six miles above the surface of the Earth, where the air is too thin to breathe, at 550 mph in an aluminum cylinder. Could it be that these devices interfere with aircraft navigation below 10,000 feet, but not in the thinner air above?
Most people don’t question things we’re told to do for our safety. On one of my flights this trip, a passenger didn’t turn off his portable music player as the aircraft descended and the familiar announcement was made, and was accosted by a fellow passenger who told the offending music listener that his player could “mess up” the aircraft’s navigation system, and that he was endangering our flight. Meanwhile, for our own safety, we disrobe at TSA checkpoints, and don’t carry dangerous items like mouthwash and shampoo, remaining compliant because most people think this makes us safer.
The damage al Qaeda’s attack caused when it destroyed the World Trade Center was about $10 billion (not including the substantial cost in terms of human life). Meanwhile, the TSA’s annual budget is $6.3 billion, so we’re spending more than half the cost of the destruction of the World Trade Center every year to protect ourselves from another attack. Clearly, the bulk of the cost of the September 11, 2001 attack has come in terms of the costs we have incurred since that day, not the cost of the actual destruction from the attack. That is bin Laden’s revenge.
Part of bin Laden’s revenge comes in the form of the monetary cost, and part comes in the form of our ready acceptance of our loss of liberty. Our Constitution says, “The right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated… but upon probable cause…” Yet everyone who takes an airline flight undergoes such a search, with no probable cause. The TSA has yet to discover anyone at any checkpoint poised to undertake any terrorist activity.
Yes, there was the financial cost and loss of life, but perhaps a bigger victory, and an on-going one, for bin Laden, is the undermining of our constitutional rights. I talk with people all the time who tell me they believe our loss of rights is worth it to make flying safer. They don’t question the nonsensical TSA rules. We’re training compliant citizens, and those citizens trained to be more compliant to government mandates at TSA checkpoints indirectly are being trained not to question government mandates in all areas of our lives.
No thinking person can believe that preventing people from carrying their own bottled water onto airplanes, or carrying their own toothpaste and shampoo, makes us safer. Even preventing people from carrying knives on board does not make us safer. Prior to September 11, 2001, the conventional wisdom on an aircraft hijacking was to quietly comply with the hijacker’s demands so everyone could land safely. That conventional wisdom disappeared before that day was over, as the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 heard about the other hijackings and overpowered the hijackers. Passengers will no longer be compliant with hijackers’ demands, and if the passengers had knives, it would enable them to more effectively fight back, as they would do today.
We can debate the wisdom of allowing people to carry knives on board aircraft, but how about deodorant, or shampoo? Where do we draw the line? The answer is that we don’t. We have been intimidated, by bin Laden’s terrorist network and our own federal government, into complying with demands that everyone should recognize as absurd, and a violation of our constitutional rights.
The Constitution always has been a pesky obstacle standing in the way of the government taking away more of our liberties. Bin Laden’s attacks were aimed directly at the constitutional safeguards that make ours a free country. Bin Laden is gone, but his revenge is the erosion of our constitutional liberties that will live on.
http://www.independent.org/blog/index.php?p=10419
-
Please cite the part of the constitution where your have the right to board a commercial flight.
-
Sure, when you cite the part that allows you to trim your toenails. Or are limited, enumerated powers as clearly described by the framers concepts too difficult to grasp?
-
Can you see a difference between securing commercial aircraft post-9/11 and personal grooming?
-
There are multiple challenges to TSA screening in the court system now. We'll see if the constitutionality of the screening is upheld. I know where I'd put my money if there was betting on the ultimate ruling.
-
Me too: on the ever expanding nanny state which strays ever further from the founding vision for this nation.
-
And yes, I can tell the difference between the two. In view of Obamacare, over-criminalization, EPA CO2 rulings, insanely complex tax code, second amendment restrictions, and so on, can you understand why one might not be pleased by yet further federal encroachment, particularly by an agency that has not caught a single terrorist, regularly fails security audits, hasn't addressed gaping security holes where airport staff are concerned, et al? Or are we supposed to pretend they provide competent security as we imagine ourselves to be a free people?
-
With the many document flaws of TSA, it still looks good when compared to the private security screening of pre-9/11.
TSA screening is designed to deter terrorists, not catch them. Now there are criminal investigators/FAMS assigned to Joint Terrorism Task Forces that are seeking out terrorists proactively.....
I have yet to see a better system suggested that is practical in the US. If you want El Al profiling, you better get on board with Shin Bet domestic intelligence gathering.
-
And retroactive self-incrimination, too.
DoJ to Congress: Make ISPs keep tabs on users
10 CommentsRSSEmailPrint
Many wireless companies — which must collect some data — also do not retain some other records. | AP Photo Close
By TONY ROMM | 5/10/11 12:05 PM EDT
As a new Senate privacy panel considers the data collected by iPhones, Androids and BlackBerrys, the Department of Justice is reminding lawmakers that it needs Internet providers to store more data about their users to help with federal investigations.
Current law doesn't require those Internet service providers to "retain any data for any particular length of time," although some already do, said Jason Weinstein, deputy assistant attorney general at the DOJ's Criminal Division. And many wireless companies — which must collect some data — also "do not retain records that would enable law enforcement to identify a suspect's smartphone based on the IP address collected by websites the suspect visited," he noted in prepared testimony.
Continue Reading
Text Size
-+reset Listen
That's why Weinstein urged the Senate Judiciary’s Privacy, Technology and the Law subcommittee on Tuesday to consider data-retention legislation as it weighs new privacy efforts in the digital age. The top DOJ official said such a congressional fix would boost the agency's ability to investigate privacy breaches, prosecute other digital crimes and ferret out abuses in the offline world.
"Those records are an absolutely necessary link in the investigative chain," Weinstein told the panel.
Data retention has proven to be a particularly divisive issue in the privacy community. Some top tech stakeholders believe it would allow companies and law enforcement agencies too much access to consumers' personal information, such as the websites they visit. The resulting caches of information could further be subject to data breach, many argue.
But data-retention rules are particularly appealing to DOJ, which argued at a hearing earlier this year that such legislation would assist greatly with cyberstalking and other tough law enforcement investigations. Weinstein stressed Tuesday the department seeks a law that would require providers to keep records for a “reasonable period of time,” and seeks a “balance” between the needs of law enforcement, private industry and consumers.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54658.html
-
I'm not sure how you get "Retroactive probable cause" out of that article.
-
Most of us think of our online warblings as ethereal things with a short shelf life. Should you come under government scrutiny, words long since forgotten could be used as reason to launch a criminal investigation. To my mind, it's like if the post office opened, copied, and stored every piece of mail, with you finding out decades later that something long discarded is now being used to start criminal proceedings against you.
-
Unless you are engaging in criminal conduct on the net, there isn't anything to be concerned about.
-
As someone who has already explained to you how postings of mine did indeed come back to haunt me I am less than reassured, particularly in view of bits of info like this:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/record-number-of-americans-targeted-by-national-security-letters
As the feds have already pooped all over citizen's live's enforcing foreign laws the citizens in question had no knowledge of, it does not take a lot of wild eyed extrapolation to conjure a circumstance where and ISP could be forced to hand over information it had been mandated to store that then goes on to be used by LEOs as evidence of some sort of malfeasance for which the target of the investigation was unaware. Conspiracy to import undersized lobsters, anyone?
Indeed, as someone who deals with his share of HR issues I've already had to contend with interesting discovery requests. What happens to civil litigation when there are decades worth of records stored somewhere only in need of a court order to sift through? You can't see that being ability being abused, either?
-
Discovery in civil litigation goes both ways. As you point out, both in the civil and criminal areas, all sorts of records can be accessed. Should we not have records of any transactions? The interwebs isn't a secure environment, assume that everything can be compromised.
-
Precisely my point: with a federally mandated storage regimen yesterday's harmless bit of fun becomes today's pattern of behavior. I regularly cull professional communications after 3 years just so I don't have to worry about sifting through tens of thousands of emails looking for what some lawyer might putatively consider germane as he instead tries to foist a lot of time wasting discovery in the hope a settlement becomes deemed easier than complying with his fishing expedition. And now the Feds want to archive all that stuff? For how long? Who has access? To what end? Looks to me like they are casting a huge net without answering fundamental questions. Hell, this act might save the USPS by increasing the use of first class mail, which would not be subject to these requirements. Yet.
-
Unless a "harmless bit of fun" is a violation of criminal law, what is your concern? If I was that worried about the net, I'd throw my computers into a blast funace and never go online again. You act as if you are writing samizdat under Stalin.
-
And I've already detailed issues I've dealt with in the past. One example I used here are the standards of banter used in the kitchen v. the standards of banter in a civil service gig. If utterings in the former were detailed in the latter all sorts of consternation would ensue. You can imagine no future employer who might take issue with your online habits? Plenty of your posts would cause a lot of raised eyebrows in some quarters. Is your email better sanitized than your online life? Plenty of folks already contending with HR opprobrium due to their posting habits on Facebook, do we really want a net of undefined size and duration to be cast even further? You can't imagine that resource ever being abused or standards changing to the point that something commonplace in the past is taboo today?
-
It's an totally different situation of employment law vs. search and seizure related to criminal investigations.
-
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/16/indiana-court-strips-citizens-of-right-to-resist-unlawful-police-entry/
-
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/16/indiana-court-strips-citizens-of-right-to-resist-unlawful-police-entry/
And your thoughts BD?
-
Nothing to see here, move along.
THE SECRET SHARER
Is Thomas Drake an enemy of the state?
by Jane Mayer
MAY 23, 2011
Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency, faces some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen. Photograph by Martin Schoeller.
On June 13th, a fifty-four-year-old former government employee named Thomas Drake is scheduled to appear in a courtroom in Baltimore, where he will face some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen. A former senior executive at the National Security Agency, the government’s electronic-espionage service, he is accused, in essence, of being an enemy of the state. According to a ten-count indictment delivered against him in April, 2010, Drake violated the Espionage Act—the 1917 statute that was used to convict Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. officer who, in the eighties and nineties, sold U.S. intelligence to the K.G.B., enabling the Kremlin to assassinate informants. In 2007, the indictment says, Drake willfully retained top-secret defense documents that he had sworn an oath to protect, sneaking them out of the intelligence agency’s headquarters, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and taking them home, for the purpose of “unauthorized disclosure.” The aim of this scheme, the indictment says, was to leak government secrets to an unnamed newspaper reporter, who is identifiable as Siobhan Gorman, of the Baltimore Sun. Gorman wrote a prize-winning series of articles for the Sun about financial waste, bureaucratic dysfunction, and dubious legal practices in N.S.A. counterterrorism programs. Drake is also charged with obstructing justice and lying to federal law-enforcement agents. If he is convicted on all counts, he could receive a prison term of thirty-five years.
The government argues that Drake recklessly endangered the lives of American servicemen. “This is not an issue of benign documents,” William M. Welch II, the senior litigation counsel who is prosecuting the case, argued at a hearing in March, 2010. The N.S.A., he went on, collects “intelligence for the soldier in the field. So when individuals go out and they harm that ability, our intelligence goes dark and our soldier in the field gets harmed.”
Top officials at the Justice Department describe such leak prosecutions as almost obligatory. Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General who supervises the department’s criminal division, told me, “You don’t get to break the law and disclose classified information just because you want to.” He added, “Politics should play no role in it whatsoever.”
When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.” But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.
Gabriel Schoenfeld, a conservative political scientist at the Hudson Institute, who, in his book “Necessary Secrets” (2010), argues for more stringent protection of classified information, says, “Ironically, Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history—even more so than Nixon.”
ne afternoon in January, Drake met with me, giving his first public interview about this case. He is tall, with thinning sandy hair framing a domed forehead, and he has the erect bearing of a member of the Air Force, where he served before joining the N.S.A., in 2001. Obsessive, dramatic, and emotional, he has an unwavering belief in his own rectitude. Sitting at a Formica table at the Tastee Diner, in Bethesda, Drake—who is a registered Republican—groaned and thrust his head into his hands. “I actually had hopes for Obama,” he said. He had not only expected the President to roll back the prosecutions launched by the Bush Administration; he had thought that Bush Administration officials would be investigated for overstepping the law in the “war on terror.”
“But power is incredibly destructive,” Drake said. “It’s a weird, pathological thing. I also think the intelligence community coöpted Obama, because he’s rather naïve about national security. He’s accepted the fear and secrecy. We’re in a scary space in this country.”
The Justice Department’s indictment narrows the frame around Drake’s actions, focussing almost exclusively on his handling of what it claims are five classified documents. But Drake sees his story as a larger tale of political reprisal, one that he fears the government will never allow him to air fully in court. “I’m a target,” he said. “I’ve got a bull’s-eye on my back.” He continued, “I did not tell secrets. I am facing prison for having raised an alarm, period. I went to a reporter with a few key things: fraud, waste, and abuse, and the fact that there were legal alternatives to the Bush Administration’s ‘dark side’ ”—in particular, warrantless domestic spying by the N.S.A.
The indictment portrays him not as a hero but as a treacherous man who violated “the government trust.” Drake said of the prosecutors, “They can say what they want. But the F.B.I. can find something on anyone.”
Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, says of the Drake case, “The government wants this to be about unlawfully retained information. The defense, meanwhile, is painting a picture of a public-interested whistle-blower who struggled to bring attention to what he saw as multibillion-dollar mismanagement.” Because Drake is not a spy, Aftergood says, the case will “test whether intelligence officers can be convicted of violating the Espionage Act even if their intent is pure.” He believes that the trial may also test whether the nation’s expanding secret intelligence bureaucracy is beyond meaningful accountability. “It’s a much larger debate than whether a piece of paper was at a certain place at a certain time,” he says.
Jack Balkin, a liberal law professor at Yale, agrees that the increase in leak prosecutions is part of a larger transformation. “We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state,” he says. In his view, zealous leak prosecutions are consonant with other political shifts since 9/11: the emergence of a vast new security bureaucracy, in which at least two and a half million people hold confidential, secret, or top-secret clearances; huge expenditures on electronic monitoring, along with a reinterpretation of the law in order to sanction it; and corporate partnerships with the government that have transformed the counterterrorism industry into a powerful lobbying force. Obama, Balkin says, has “systematically adopted policies consistent with the second term of the Bush Administration.”
On March 28th, Obama held a meeting in the White House with five advocates for greater transparency in government. During the discussion, the President drew a sharp distinction between whistle-blowers who exclusively reveal wrongdoing and those who jeopardize national security. The importance of maintaining secrecy about the impending raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound was likely on Obama’s mind. The White House has been particularly bedevilled by the ongoing release of classified documents by WikiLeaks, the group led by Julian Assange. Last year, WikiLeaks began releasing a vast trove of sensitive government documents allegedly leaked by a U.S. soldier, Bradley Manning; the documents included references to a courier for bin Laden who had moved his family to Abbottabad—the town where bin Laden was hiding out. Manning has been charged with “aiding the enemy.”
Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, attended the meeting, and said that Obama’s tone was generally supportive of transparency. But when the subject of national-security leaks came up, Brian said, “the President shifted in his seat and leaned forward. He said this may be where we have some differences. He said he doesn’t want to protect the people who leak to the media war plans that could impact the troops.” Though Brian was impressed with Obama’s over-all stance on transparency, she felt that he might be misinformed about some of the current leak cases. She warned Obama that prosecuting whistle-blowers would undermine his legacy. Brian had been told by the White House to avoid any “ask”s on specific issues, but she told the President that, according to his own logic, Drake was exactly the kind of whistle-blower who deserved protection.
As Drake tells it, his problems began on September 11, 2001. “The next seven weeks were crucial,” he said. “It’s foundational to why I am a criminal defendant today.”
The morning that Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. was, coincidentally, Drake’s first full day of work as a civilian employee at the N.S.A.—an agency that James Bamford, the author of “The Shadow Factory” (2008), calls “the largest, most costly, and most technologically sophisticated spy organization the world has ever known.” Drake, a linguist and a computer expert with a background in military crypto-electronics, had worked for twelve years as an outside contractor at the N.S.A. Under a program code-named Jackpot, he focussed on finding and fixing weaknesses in the agency’s software programs. But, after going through interviews and background checks, he began working full time for Maureen Baginski, the chief of the Signals Intelligence Directorate at the N.S.A., and the agency’s third-highest-ranking official.
Even in an age in which computerized feats are commonplace, the N.S.A.’s capabilities are breathtaking. The agency reportedly has the capacity to intercept and download, every six hours, electronic communications equivalent to the contents of the Library of Congress. Three times the size of the C.I.A., and with a third of the U.S.’s entire intelligence budget, the N.S.A. has a five-thousand-acre campus at Fort Meade protected by iris scanners and facial-recognition devices. The electric bill there is said to surpass seventy million dollars a year.
Nevertheless, when Drake took up his post the agency was undergoing an identity crisis. With the Cold War over, the agency’s mission was no longer clear. As Drake puts it, “Without the Soviet Union, it didn’t know what to do.” Moreover, its technology had failed to keep pace with the shift in communications to cellular phones, fibre-optic cable, and the Internet. Two assessments commissioned by General Michael Hayden, who took over the agency in 1999, had drawn devastating conclusions. One described the N.S.A. as “an agency mired in bureaucratic conflict” and “suffering from poor leadership.” In January, 2000, the agency’s computer system crashed for three and a half days, causing a virtual intelligence blackout.
Agency leaders decided to “stir up the gene pool,” Drake says. Although his hiring was meant to signal fresh thinking, he was given a clumsy bureaucratic title: Senior Change Leader/Chief, Change Leadership & Communications Office, Signals Intelligence Directorate.
The 9/11 attacks caught the U.S.’s national-security apparatus by surprise. N.S.A. officials were humiliated to learn that the Al Qaeda hijackers had spent their final days, undetected, in a motel in Laurel, Maryland—a few miles outside the N.S.A.’s fortified gates. They had bought a folding knife at a Target on Fort Meade Road. Only after the attacks did agency officials notice that, on September 10th, their surveillance systems had intercepted conversations in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia warning that “the match begins tomorrow” and “tomorrow is Zero Hour.”
Drake, hoping to help fight back against Al Qaeda, immediately thought of a tantalizing secret project he had come across while working on Jackpot. Code-named ThinThread, it had been developed by technological wizards in a kind of Skunk Works on the N.S.A. campus. Formally, the project was supervised by the agency’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, or SARC.
While most of the N.S.A. was reeling on September 11th, inside SARC the horror unfolded “almost like an ‘I-told-you-so’ moment,” according to J. Kirk Wiebe, an intelligence analyst who worked there. “We knew we weren’t keeping up.” SARC was led by a crypto-mathematician named Bill Binney, whom Wiebe describes as “one of the best analysts in history.” Binney and a team of some twenty others believed that they had pinpointed the N.S.A.’s biggest problem—data overload—and then solved it. But the agency’s management hadn’t agreed.
Binney, who is six feet three, is a bespectacled sixty-seven-year-old man with wisps of dark hair; he has the quiet, tense air of a preoccupied intellectual. Now retired and suffering gravely from diabetes, which has already claimed his left leg, he agreed recently to speak publicly for the first time about the Drake case. When we met, at a restaurant near N.S.A. headquarters, he leaned crutches against an extra chair. “This is too serious not to talk about,” he said.
Binney expressed terrible remorse over the way some of his algorithms were used after 9/11. ThinThread, the “little program” that he invented to track enemies outside the U.S., “got twisted,” and was used for both foreign and domestic spying: “I should apologize to the American people. It’s violated everyone’s rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world.” According to Binney, Drake took his side against the N.S.A.’s management and, as a result, became a political target within the agency.
Binney spent most of his career at the agency. In 1997, he became the technical director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, a division of six thousand employees which focusses on analyzing signals intelligence. By the late nineties, the N.S.A. had become overwhelmed by the amount of digital data it was collecting. Binney and his team began developing codes aimed at streamlining the process, allowing the agency to isolate useful intelligence. This was the beginning of ThinThread.
In the late nineties, Binney estimated that there were some two and a half billion phones in the world and one and a half billion I.P. addresses. Approximately twenty terabytes of unique information passed around the world every minute. Binney started assembling a system that could trap and map all of it. “I wanted to graph the world,” Binney said. “People said, ‘You can’t do this—the possibilities are infinite.’ ” But he argued that “at any given point in time the number of atoms in the universe is big, but it’s finite.”
As Binney imagined it, ThinThread would correlate data from financial transactions, travel records, Web searches, G.P.S. equipment, and any other “attributes” that an analyst might find useful in pinpointing “the bad guys.” By 2000, Binney, using fibre optics, had set up a computer network that could chart relationships among people in real time. It also turned the N.S.A.’s data-collection paradigm upside down. Instead of vacuuming up information around the world and then sending it all back to headquarters for analysis, ThinThread processed information as it was collected—discarding useless information on the spot and avoiding the overload problem that plagued centralized systems. Binney says, “The beauty of it is that it was open-ended, so it could keep expanding.”
Pilot tests of ThinThread proved almost too successful, according to a former intelligence expert who analyzed it. “It was nearly perfect,” the official says. “But it processed such a large amount of data that it picked up more Americans than the other systems.” Though ThinThread was intended to intercept foreign communications, it continued documenting signals when a trail crossed into the U.S. This was a big problem: federal law forbade the monitoring of domestic communications without a court warrant. And a warrant couldn’t be issued without probable cause and a known suspect. In order to comply with the law, Binney installed privacy controls and added an “anonymizing feature,” so that all American communications would be encrypted until a warrant was issued. The system would indicate when a pattern looked suspicious enough to justify a warrant.
But this was before 9/11, and the N.S.A.’s lawyers deemed ThinThread too invasive of Americans’ privacy. In addition, concerns were raised about whether the system would function on a huge scale, although preliminary tests had suggested that it would. In the fall of 2000, Hayden decided not to use ThinThread, largely because of his legal advisers’ concerns. Instead, he funded a rival approach, called Trailblazer, and he turned to private defense contractors to build it. Matthew Aid, the author of a heralded 2009 history of the agency, “The Secret Sentry,” says, “The resistance to ThinThread was just standard bureaucratic politics. ThinThread was small, cost-effective, easy to understand, and protected the identity of Americans. But it wasn’t what the higher-ups wanted. They wanted a big machine that could make Martinis, too.”
The N.S.A.’s failure to stop the 9/11 plot infuriated Binney: he believed that ThinThread had been ready to deploy nine months earlier. Working with N.S.A. counterterrorism experts, he had planned to set up his system at sites where foreign terrorism was prevalent, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Those bits of conversations they found too late?” Binney said. “That would have never happened. I had it managed in a way that would send out automatic alerts. It would have been, Bang!”
Meanwhile, there was nothing to show for Trailblazer, other than mounting bills. As the system stalled at the level of schematic drawings, top executives kept shuttling between jobs at the agency and jobs with the high-paying contractors. For a time, both Hayden’s deputy director and his chief of signals-intelligence programs worked at SAIC, a company that won several hundred million dollars in Trailblazer contracts. In 2006, Trailblazer was abandoned as a $1.2-billion flop.
oon after 9/11, Drake says, he prepared a short, classified summary explaining how ThinThread “could be put into the fight,” and gave it to Baginski, his boss. But he says that she “wouldn’t respond electronically. She just wrote in a black felt marker, ‘They’ve found a different solution.’ ” When he asked her what it was, she responded, “I can’t tell you.” Baginski, who now works for a private defense contractor, recalls her interactions with Drake differently, but she declined to comment specifically.
In the weeks after the attacks, rumors began circulating inside the N.S.A. that the agency, with the approval of the Bush White House, was violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—the 1978 law, known as FISA, that bars domestic surveillance without a warrant. Years later, the rumors were proved correct. In nearly total secrecy, and under pressure from the White House, Hayden sanctioned warrantless domestic surveillance. The new policy, which lawyers in the Justice Department justified by citing President Bush’s executive authority as Commander-in-Chief, contravened a century of constitutional case law. Yet, on October 4, 2001, Bush authorized the policy, and it became operational by October 6th. Bamford, in “The Shadow Factory,” suggests that Hayden, having been overcautious about privacy before 9/11, swung to the opposite extreme after the attacks. Hayden, who now works for a security-consulting firm, declined to respond to detailed questions about the surveillance program.
When Binney heard the rumors, he was convinced that the new domestic-surveillance program employed components of ThinThread: a bastardized version, stripped of privacy controls. “It was my brainchild,” he said. “But they removed the protections, the anonymization process. When you remove that, you can target anyone.” He said that although he was not “read in” to the new secret surveillance program, “my people were brought in, and they told me, ‘Can you believe they’re doing this? They’re getting billing records on U.S. citizens! They’re putting pen registers’ ”—logs of dialled phone numbers—“ ‘on everyone in the country!’ ”
Drake recalled that, after the October 4th directive, “strange things were happening. Equipment was being moved. People were coming to me and saying, ‘We’re now targeting our own country!’ ” Drake says that N.S.A. officials who helped the agency obtain FISA warrants were suddenly reassigned, a tipoff that the conventional process was being circumvented. He added, “I was concerned that it was illegal, and none of it was necessary.” In his view, domestic data mining “could have been done legally” if the N.S.A. had maintained privacy protections. “But they didn’t want an accountable system.”
Aid, the author of the N.S.A. history, suggests that ThinThread’s privacy protections interfered with top officials’ secret objective—to pick American targets by name. “They wanted selection, not just collection,” he says.
A former N.S.A. official expressed skepticism that Drake cared deeply about the constitutional privacy issues raised by the agency’s surveillance policies. The official characterizes him as a bureaucrat driven by resentment of a rival project—Trailblazer—and calls his story “revisionist history.” But Drake says that, in the fall of 2001, he told Baginski he feared that the agency was breaking the law. He says that to some extent she shared his views, and later told him she feared that the agency would be “haunted” by the surveillance program. In 2003, she left the agency for the F.B.I., in part because of her discomfort with the surveillance program. Drake says that, at one point, Baginski told him that if he had concerns he should talk to the N.S.A.’s general counsel. Drake claims that he did, and that the agency’s top lawyer, Vito Potenza, told him, “Don’t worry about it. We’re the executive agent for the White House. It’s all been scrubbed. It’s legal.” When he pressed further, Potenza told him, “It’s none of your business.” (Potenza, who is now retired, declined to comment.)
Drake says, “I feared for the future. If Pandora’s box was opened, what would the government become?” He was not about to drop the matter. Matthew Aid, who describes Drake as “brilliant,” says that “he has sort of a Jesus complex—only he can see the way things are. Everyone else is mentally deficient, or in someone’s pocket.” Drake’s history of whistle-blowing stretches back to high school, in Manchester, Vermont, where his father, a retired Air Force officer, taught. When drugs infested the school, Drake became a police informant. And Watergate, which occurred while he was a student, taught him “that no one is above the law.”
Drake says that in the Air Force, where he learned to capture electronic signals, the FISA law “was drilled into us.” He recalls, “If you accidentally intercepted U.S. persons, there were special procedures to expunge it.” The procedures had been devised to prevent the recurrence of past abuses, such as Nixon’s use of the N.S.A. to spy on his political enemies.
Drake didn’t know the precise details, but he sensed that domestic spying “was now being done on a vast level.” He was dismayed to hear from N.S.A. colleagues that “arrangements” were being made with telecom and credit-card companies. He added, “The mantra was ‘Get the data!’ ” The transformation of the N.S.A., he says, was so radical that “it wasn’t just that the brakes came off after 9/11—we were in a whole different vehicle.”
ew people have a precise knowledge of the size or scope of the N.S.A.’s domestic-surveillance powers. An agency spokesman declined to comment on how the agency “performs its mission,” but said that its activities are constitutional and subject to “comprehensive and rigorous” oversight. But Susan Landau, a former engineer at Sun Microsystems, and the author of a new book, “Surveillance or Security?,” notes that, in 2003, the government placed equipment capable of copying electronic communications at locations across America. These installations were made, she says, at “switching offices” that not only connect foreign and domestic communications but also handle purely domestic traffic. As a result, she surmises, the U.S. now has the capability to monitor domestic traffic on a huge scale. “Why was it done this way?” she asks. “One can come up with all sorts of nefarious reasons, but one doesn’t want to think that way about our government.”
Binney, for his part, believes that the agency now stores copies of all e-mails transmitted in America, in case the government wants to retrieve the details later. In the past few years, the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can be searched with “dictionary selection,” in the manner of Google. After 9/11, he says, “General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn’t put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the sea.”
Binney considers himself a conservative, and, as an opponent of big government, he worries that the N.S.A.’s data-mining program is so extensive that it could help “create an Orwellian state.” Whereas wiretap surveillance requires trained human operators, data mining is automated, meaning that the entire country can be watched. Conceivably, U.S. officials could “monitor the Tea Party, or reporters, whatever group or organization you want to target,” he says. “It’s exactly what the Founding Fathers never wanted.”
On October 31, 2001, soon after Binney concluded that the N.S.A. was headed in an unethical direction, he retired. He had served for thirty-six years. His wife worked there, too. Wiebe, the analyst, and Ed Loomis, a computer scientist at SARC, also left. Binney said of his decision, “I couldn’t be an accessory to subverting the Constitution.”
ot long after Binney quit the N.S.A., he says, he confided his concerns about the secret surveillance program to Diane Roark, a staff member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the agency. Roark, who has flowing gray hair and large, wide-set eyes, looks like a waifish poet. But in her intelligence-committee job, which she held for seventeen years, she modelled herself on Machiavelli’s maxim that it is better to be feared than loved. Within the N.S.A.’s upper ranks she was widely resented. A former top N.S.A. official says of her, “In meetings, she would just say, ‘You’re lying.’ ”
Roark agrees that she distrusted the N.S.A.’s managers. “I asked very tough questions, because they were trying to hide stuff,” she says. “For instance, I wasn’t supposed to know about the warrantless surveillance. They were all determined that no one else was going to tell them what to do.”
Like Drake and Binney, Roark was a registered Republican, skeptical about bureaucracy but strong on national defense. She had a knack for recruiting sources at the N.S.A. One of them was Drake, who introduced himself to her in 2000, after she visited N.S.A. headquarters and gave a stinging talk on the agency’s failings; she also established relationships with Binney and Wiebe. Hayden was furious about this back channel. After learning that Binney had attended a meeting with Roark at which N.S.A. employees complained about Trailblazer, Hayden dressed down the critics. He then sent out an agency-wide memo, in which he warned that several “individuals, in a session with our congressional overseers, took a position in direct opposition to one that we had corporately decided to follow. . . . Actions contrary to our decisions will have a serious adverse effect on our efforts to transform N.S.A., and I cannot tolerate them.” Roark says of the memo, “Hayden brooked no opposition to his favorite people and programs.”
Roark, who had substantial influence over N.S.A. budget appropriations, was an early champion of Binney’s ThinThread project. She was dismayed, she says, to hear that it had evolved into a means of domestic surveillance, and felt personally responsible. Her oversight committee had been created after Watergate specifically to curb such abuses. “It was my duty to oppose it,” she told me. “That is why oversight existed, so that these things didn’t happen again. I’m not an attorney, but I thought that there was no way it was constitutional.” Roark recalls thinking that, if N.S.A. officials were breaking the law, she was “going to fry them.”
She soon learned that she was practically alone in her outrage. Very few congressional leaders had been briefed on the program, and some were apparently going along with it, even if they had reservations. Starting in February, 2002, Roark says, she wrote a series of memos warning of potential illegalities and privacy breaches and handed them to the staffers for Porter Goss, the chairman of her committee, and Nancy Pelosi, its ranking Democrat. But nothing changed. (Pelosi’s spokesman denied that she received such memos, and pointed out that a year earlier Pelosi had written to Hayden and expressed grave concerns about the N.S.A.’s electronic surveillance.)
Roark, feeling powerless, retired. Before leaving Washington, though, she learned that Hayden, who knew of her strong opposition to the surveillance program, wanted to talk to her. They met at N.S.A. headquarters on July 15, 2002. According to notes that she made after the meeting, Hayden pleaded with her to stop agitating against the program. He conceded that the policy would leak at some point, and told her that when it did she could “yell and scream” as much as she wished. Meanwhile, he wanted to give the program more time. She asked Hayden why the N.S.A. had chosen not to include privacy protections for Americans. She says that he “kept not answering. Finally, he mumbled, and looked down, and said, ‘We didn’t need them. We had the power.’ He didn’t even look me in the eye. I was flabbergasted.” She asked him directly if the government was getting warrants for domestic surveillance, and he admitted that it was not.
In an e-mail, Hayden confirmed that the meeting took place, but said that he recalled only its “broad outlines.” He noted that Roark was not “cleared to know about the expanded surveillance program, so I did not go into great detail.” He added, “I assured her that I firmly believed that what N.S.A. was doing was effective, appropriate, and lawful. I also reminded her that the program’s success depended on it remaining secret, that it was appropriately classified, and that any public discussion of it would have to await a later day.”
During the meeting, Roark says, she warned Hayden that no court would uphold the program. Curiously, Hayden responded that he had already been assured by unspecified individuals that he could count on a majority of “the nine votes”—an apparent reference to the Supreme Court. According to Roark’s notes, Hayden told her that such a vote might even be 7–2 in his favor.
Roark couldn’t believe that the Supreme Court had been adequately informed of the N.S.A.’s transgressions, and she decided to alert Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, sending a message through a family friend. Once again, there was no response. She also tried to contact a judge on the FISA court, in Washington, which adjudicates requests for warrants sanctioning domestic surveillance of suspected foreign agents. But the judge had her assistant refer the call to the Department of Justice, which had approved the secret program in the first place. Roark says that she even tried to reach David Addington, the legal counsel to Vice-President Dick Cheney, who had once been her congressional colleague. He never called back, and Addington was eventually revealed to be one of the prime advocates for the surveillance program.
“This was such a Catch-22,” Roark says. “There was no one to go to.” In October, 2003, feeling “profoundly depressed,” she left Washington and moved to a small town in Oregon.
Drake was still working at the N.S.A., but he was secretly informing on the agency to Congress. In addition to briefing Roark, he had become an anonymous source for the congressional committees investigating intelligence failures related to 9/11. He provided Congress with top-secret documents chronicling the N.S.A.’s shortcomings. Drake believed that the agency had failed to feed other intelligence agencies critical information that it had collected before the attacks. Congressional investigators corroborated these criticisms, though they found greater lapses at the C.I.A. and the F.B.I.
Around this time, Drake recalls, Baginski warned him, “Be careful, Tom—they’re looking for leakers.” He found this extraordinary, and asked himself, “Telling the truth to congressional oversight committees is leaking?” But the N.S.A. has a rule requiring employees to clear any contact with Congress, and in the spring of 2002 Baginski told Drake, “It’s time for you to find another job.” He soon switched to a less sensitive post at the agency, the first of several.
As for Binney, he remained frustrated even in retirement about what he considered the misuse of ThinThread. In September, 2002, he, Wiebe, Loomis, and Roark filed what they thought was a confidential complaint with the Pentagon’s Inspector General, extolling the virtues of the original ThinThread project and accusing the N.S.A. of wasting money on Trailblazer. Drake did not put his name on the complaint, because he was still an N.S.A. employee. But he soon became involved in helping the others, who had become friends. He obtained documents aimed at proving waste, fraud, and abuse in the Trailblazer program.
The Inspector General’s report, which was completed in 2005, was classified as secret, so only a few insiders could read what Drake describes as a scathing document. Possibly the only impact of the probe was to hasten the end of Trailblazer, whose budget overruns had become indisputably staggering. Though Hayden acknowledged to a Senate committee that the costs of the Trailblazer project “were greater than anticipated, to the tune of, I would say, hundreds of millions,” most of the scandal’s details remained hidden from the public.
In December, 2005, the N.S.A.’s culture of secrecy was breached by a stunning leak. The Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that the N.S.A. was running a warrantless wiretapping program inside the United States. The paper’s editors had held onto the scoop for more than a year, weighing the propriety of publishing it. According to Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, President Bush pleaded with the paper’s editors to not publish the story; Keller told New York that “the basic message was: You’ll have blood on your hands.” After the paper defied the Administration, Bush called the leak “a shameful act.” At his command, federal agents launched a criminal investigation to identify the paper’s source.
The Times story shocked the country. Democrats, including then Senator Obama, denounced the program as illegal and demanded congressional hearings. A FISA court judge resigned in protest. In March, 2006, Mark Klein, a retired A.T. & T. employee, gave a sworn statement to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was filing a lawsuit against the company, describing a secret room in San Francisco where powerful Narus computers appeared to be sorting and copying all of the telecom’s Internet traffic—both foreign and domestic. A high-capacity fibre-optic cable seemed to be forwarding this data to a centralized location, which, Klein surmised, was N.S.A. headquarters. Soon, USA Today reported that A.T. & T., Verizon, and BellSouth had secretly opened their electronic records to the government, in violation of communications laws. Legal experts said that each instance of spying without a warrant was a serious crime, and that there appeared to be hundreds of thousands of infractions.
President Bush and Administration officials assured the American public that the surveillance program was legal, although new legislation was eventually required to bring it more in line with the law. They insisted that the traditional method of getting warrants was too slow for the urgent threats posed by international terrorism. And they implied that the only domestic surveillance taking place involved tapping phone calls in which one speaker was outside the U.S.
Drake says of Bush Administration officials, “They were lying through their teeth. They had chosen to go an illegal route, and it wasn’t because they had no other choice.” He also believed that the Administration was covering up the full extent of the program. “The phone calls were the tip of the iceberg. The really sensitive stuff was the data mining.” He says, “I was faced with a crisis of conscience. What do I do—remain silent, and complicit, or go to the press?”
Drake has a wife and five sons, the youngest of whom has serious health problems, and so he agonized over the decision. He researched the relevant legal statutes and concluded that if he spoke to a reporter about unclassified matters the only risk he ran was losing his job. N.S.A. policy forbids initiating contact with the press. “I get that it’s grounds for ‘We have to let you go,’ ” he says. But he decided that he was willing to lose his job. “This was a violation of everything I knew and believed as an American. We were making the Nixon Administration look like pikers.”
Drake got in touch with Gorman, who covered the N.S.A. for the Baltimore Sun. He had admired an article of hers and knew that Roark had spoken to her previously, though not about anything classified. He got Gorman’s contact information from Roark, who warned him to be careful. She knew that in the past the N.S.A. had dealt harshly with people who embarrassed it.
Drake set up a secure Hushmail e-mail account and began sending Gorman anonymous tips. Half in jest, he chose the pseudonym The Shadow Knows. He says that he insisted on three ground rules with Gorman: neither he nor she would reveal his identity; he wouldn’t be the sole source for any story; he would not supply her with classified information. But a year into the arrangement, in February, 2007, Drake decided to blow his cover, surprising Gorman by showing up at the newspaper and introducing himself as The Shadow Knows. He ended up meeting with Gorman half a dozen times. But, he says, “I never gave her anything classified.” Gorman has not been charged with wrongdoing, and declined, through her lawyer, Laura Handman, to comment, citing the pending trial.
Starting on January 29, 2006, Gorman, who now works at the Wall Street Journal, published a series of articles about problems at the N.S.A., including a story describing Trailblazer as an expensive fiasco. On May 18, 2006, the day that Hayden faced Senate confirmation hearings for a new post—the head of the C.I.A.—the Sun published Gorman’s exposé on ThinThread, which accused the N.S.A. of rejecting an approach that protected Americans’ privacy. Hayden, evidently peeved, testified that intelligence officers deserved “not to have every action analyzed, second-guessed, and criticized on the front pages of the newspapers.”
At the time, the government did not complain that the Sun had crossed a legal line. It did not contact the paper’s editors or try to restrain the paper from publishing Gorman’s work. A former N.S.A. colleague of Drake’s says he believes that the Sun stories revealed government secrets. Others disagree. Steven Aftergood, the secrecy expert, says that the articles “did not damage national security.”
Matthew Aid argues that the material Drake provided to the Sun should not have been highly classified—if it was—and in any case only highlighted that “the N.S.A. was a management nightmare, which wasn’t a secret in Washington.” In his view, Drake “was just saying, ‘We’re not doing our job, and it’s having a deleterious effect on mission performance.’ He was right, by the way.” The Sun series, Aid says, was “embarrassing to N.S.A. management, but embarrassment to the U.S. government is not a criminal offense in this country.” (Aid has a stake in this debate. In 1984, when he was in the Air Force, he spent several months in the stockade for having stored classified documents in a private locker. The experience, he says, sensitized him to issues of government secrecy.)
While the Sun was publishing its series, twenty-five federal agents and five prosecutors were struggling to identify the Times’ source. The team had targeted some two hundred possible suspects, but had found no culprits. The Sun series attracted the attention of the investigators, who theorized that its source might also have talked to the Times. This turned out not to be true. Nevertheless, the investigators quickly homed in on the Trailblazer critics. “It’s sad,” an intelligence expert says. “I think they were aiming at the Times leak and found this instead.”
Roark was an obvious suspect for the Times leak. Everyone from Hayden on down knew that she had opposed the surveillance program. After the article appeared, she says, “I was waiting for the shoe to drop.” The F.B.I. eventually contacted her, and in February, 2007, she and her attorney met with the prosecutor then in charge, Steven Tyrrell, who was the head of the fraud section at the Justice Department. Roark signed an affidavit saying that she was not a source for the Times story or for “State of War,” a related book that James Risen wrote. She also swore that she had no idea who the source was. She says of the experience, “It was an interrogation, not an interview. They treated me like a target.”
Roark recalls that the F.B.I. agents tried to force her to divulge the identity of her old N.S.A. informants. They already seemed to know about Drake, Binney, and Wiebe—perhaps from the Inspector General’s report. She refused to coöperate, arguing that it was improper for agents of the executive branch to threaten a congressional overseer about her sources. “I had the sense that N.S.A. was egging the F.B.I. on,” she says. “I’d gotten the N.S.A. so many times—they were going to get me. The N.S.A. hated me.” (The N.S.A. and the Justice Department declined to comment on the investigations.)
In the months that followed, Roark heard nothing. Finally, her lawyer placed the case in her “dead file.”
n July 26, 2007, at 9 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, armed federal agents simultaneously raided the houses of Binney, Wiebe, and Roark. (At Roark’s house, in Oregon, it was six o’clock.) Binney was in the shower when agents arrived, and recalls, “They went right upstairs to the bathroom and held guns on me and my wife, right between the eyes.” The agents took computer equipment, a copy of the Inspector General complaint and a copy of a commercial pitch that Binney had written with Wiebe, Loomis, and Roark. In 2001, the N.S.A. indicated to Binney that he could pursue commercial projects based on ThinThread. He and the others thought that aspects of the software could be used to help detect Medicare fraud.
Binney professed his innocence, and he says that the agents told him, “We think you’re lying. You need to implicate someone. ” He believed that they were trying to get him to name Roark as the Times’ source. He suggested that if they were looking for criminal conspirators they should focus on Bush and Hayden for allowing warrantless surveillance. Binney recalls an agent responding that such brazen spying didn’t happen in America. Looking over the rims of his owlish glasses, Binney replied, “Oh, really?”
Roark was sleeping when the agents arrived, and didn’t hear them until “it sounded as if they were going to pull the house down, they were rattling it so badly.” They took computers and a copy of the same commercial pitch. Her son had been interested in collaborating on the venture, and he, too, became a potential target. “They believed everybody was conspiring,” Roark says. “For years, I couldn’t talk to my own son without worrying that they’d say I was trying to influence his testimony.” Although she has been fighting cancer, she has spoken with him only sparingly since the raid.
The agents seemed to think that the commercial pitch contained classified information. Roark was shaken: she and the others thought they had edited it scrupulously to insure that it did not. Agents also informed her that a few scattered papers in her old office files were classified. After the raid, she called her lawyer and asked, “If there’s a disagreement on classification, does intent mean anything?” The question goes to the heart of the Drake case.
Roark, who always considered herself “a law-and-order person,” said of the raid, “This changed my faith.” Eventually, the prosecution offered her a plea bargain, under which she would plead guilty to perjury, for ostensibly lying to the F.B.I. about press leaks. The prosecutors also wanted her to testify against Drake. Roark refused. “I’m not going to plead guilty to deliberately doing anything wrong,” she told them. “And I can’t testify against Tom because I don’t know that he did anything wrong. Whatever Tom revealed, I am sure that he did not think it was classified.” She says, “I didn’t think the system was perfect, but I thought they’d play fair with me. They didn’t. I felt it was retribution.”
Wiebe, the retired analyst, was the most surprised by the raid—he had not yet been contacted in connection with the investigation. He recalls that agents locked his two Pembroke Welsh corgis in a bathroom and commanded his daughter and his mother-in-law, who was in her bathrobe, to stay on a couch while they searched his house. He says, “I feel I’m living in the very country I worked for years to defeat: the Soviet Union. We’re turning into a police state.” Like Roark, he says of the raid, “It was retribution for our filing the Inspector General complaint.”
Under the law, such complaints are confidential, and employees who file them are supposed to be protected from retaliation. It’s unclear if the Trailblazer complaint tipped off authorities, but all four people who signed it became targets. Jesselyn Radack, of the Government Accountability Project, a whistle-blower advocacy group that has provided legal support to Drake, says of his case, “It’s the most severe form of whistle-blower retaliation I have ever seen.”
few days after the raid, Drake met Binney and Wiebe for lunch, at a tavern in Glenelg, Maryland. “I had a pretty good idea I was next,” Drake says. But it wasn’t until the morning of November 28, 2007, that he saw armed agents streaming across his lawn. Though Drake was informed of his right to remain silent, he viewed the raid as a fresh opportunity to blow the whistle. He spent the day at his kitchen table, without a lawyer, talking. He brought up Trailblazer, but found that the investigators weren’t interested in the details of a defunct computer system, or in cost overruns, or in the constitutional conflicts posed by warrantless surveillance. Their focus was on the Times leak. He assured them that he wasn’t the source, but he confirmed his contact with the Sun, insisting that he had not relayed any classified information. He also disclosed his computer password. The agents bagged documents, computers, and books, and removed eight or ten boxes of office files from his basement. “I felt incredibly violated,” he says.
For four months, Drake continued coöperating. He admitted that he had given Gorman information that he had cut and pasted from secret documents, but stressed that he had not included anything classified. He acknowledged sending Gorman hundreds of e-mails. Then, in April, 2008, the F.B.I. told him that someone important wanted to meet with him, at a secure building in Calverton, Maryland. Drake agreed to the appointment. Soon after he showed up, he says, Steven Tyrrell, the prosecutor, walked in and told him, “You’re screwed, Mr. Drake. We have enough evidence to put you away for most of the rest of your natural life.”
Prosecutors informed Drake that they had found classified documents in the boxes in his basement—the indictment cites three—and discovered two more in his e-mail archive. They also accused him of shredding other documents, and of deleting e-mails in the months before he was raided, in an attempt to obstruct justice. Further, they said that he had lied when he told federal agents that he hadn’t given Gorman classified information.
“They had made me into an enemy of the state just by saying I was,” Drake says. The boxes in his basement contained copies of some of the less sensitive material that he had procured for the Inspector General’s Trailblazer investigation. The Inspector General’s Web site directs complainants to keep copies. Drake says that if the boxes did, in fact, contain classified documents he didn’t realize it. (The indictment emphasizes that he “willfully” retained documents.) The two documents that the government says it extracted from his e-mail archive were even less sensitive, Drake says. Both pertained to a successor to Trailblazer, code-named Turbulence. One document listed a schedule of meetings about Turbulence. It was marked “unclassified/for official use only” and posted on the N.S.A.’s internal Web site. The government has since argued that the schedule should have been classified, and that Drake should have known this. The other document, which touted the success of Turbulence, was officially declassified in July, 2010, three months after Drake was indicted. “After charging him with having this ostensibly serious classified document, the government waved a wand and decided it wasn’t so classified after all,” Radack says.
Clearly, the intelligence community hopes that the Drake case will send a message about the gravity of exposing government secrets. But Drake’s lawyer, a federal public defender named James Wyda, argued in court last spring that “there have never been two documents so benign that are the subject of this kind of prosecution against a client whose motives are as salutary as Tom’s.”
Drake insists, too, that the only computer files he destroyed were routine trash: “I held then, and I hold now, I had nothing to destroy.” Drake, who left the N.S.A. in 2008, and now works at an Apple Store outside Washington, asks, “Why didn’t I erase everything on my computer, then? I know how to do it. They found what they found.”
ot everyone familiar with Drake’s case is moved by his plight. A former federal official knowledgeable about the case says, “To his credit, he tried to raise these issues, and, to an extent, they were dealt with. But who died and left him in charge?”
In May, 2009, Tyrrell proposed a plea bargain: if Drake pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the Espionage Act and agreed to coöperate against the others, he would get a maximum of five years in prison. “They wanted me to reveal a conspiracy that didn’t exist,” Drake says. “It was all about the Times, but I had no knowledge of the leak.” Drake says that he told prosecutors, “I refuse to plea-bargain with the truth.”
That June, Drake learned that Tyrrell was leaving the government. Tyrrell was a Republican, and Drake was hopeful that a prosecutor appointed by the Obama Administration would have a different approach. But Drake was dismayed to learn that Tyrrell’s replacement, William Welch, had just been transferred from the top spot in the Justice Department’s public-integrity section, after an overzealous prosecution of Ted Stevens, the Alaska senator. A judge had thrown out Stevens’s conviction, and, at one point, had held Welch in contempt of court. (Welch declined to comment.)
In April, 2010, Welch indicted Drake, shattering his hope for a reprieve from the Obama Administration. But the prosecution’s case had shrunk dramatically from the grand conspiracy initially laid out by Tyrrell. (Welch accidentally sent the defense team an early draft of the indictment, revealing how the case had changed.) Drake was no longer charged with leaking classified documents, or with being part of a conspiracy. He is still charged with violating the Espionage Act, but now merely because of unauthorized “willful retention” of the five documents. Drake says that when he learned that, even with the reduced charges, he still faced up to thirty-five years in prison, he “was completely aghast.”
Morton Halperin, of the Open Society Institute, says that the reduced charges make the prosecution even more outlandish: “If Drake is convicted, it means the Espionage Law is an Official Secrets Act.” Because reporters often retain unauthorized defense documents, Drake’s conviction would establish a legal precedent making it possible to prosecute journalists as spies. “It poses a grave threat to the mechanism by which we learn most of what the government does,” Halperin says.
The Espionage Act has rarely been used to prosecute leakers and whistle-blowers. Drake’s case is only the fourth in which the act has been used to indict someone for mishandling classified material. “It was meant to deal with classic espionage, not publication,” Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University who is an expert on the statute, says.
The first attempt to apply the law to leakers was the aborted prosecution, in 1973, of Daniel Ellsberg, a researcher at the RAND Corporation who was charged with disclosing the Pentagon Papers—a damning secret history of the Vietnam War. But the case was dropped, owing, in large part, to prosecutorial misconduct. The second such effort was the case of Samuel L. Morison, a naval intelligence officer who, in 1985, was convicted for providing U.S. photographs of a Soviet ship to Jane’s Defence Weekly. Morison was later pardoned by Bill Clinton. The third case was the prosecution, in 2005, of a Defense Department official, Lawrence Franklin, and two lobbyists for the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Franklin pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, and the case against the lobbyists collapsed after the presiding judge insisted that prosecutors establish criminal intent. Unable to prove this, the Justice Department abandoned the case, amid criticism that the government had overreached.
Drake’s case also raises questions about double standards. In recent years, several top officials accused of similar misdeeds have not faced such serious charges. John Deutch, the former C.I.A. director, and Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General, both faced much less stringent punishment after taking classified documents home without authorization. In 2003, Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national-security adviser, smuggled classified documents out of a federal building, reportedly by hiding them in his pants. It was treated as a misdemeanor. His defense lawyer was Lanny Breuer—the official overseeing the prosecution of Drake.
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who served in the Bush Justice Department, laments the lack of consistency in leak prosecutions. He notes that no investigations have been launched into the sourcing of Bob Woodward’s four most recent books, even though “they are filled with classified information that he could only have received from the top of the government.” Gabriel Schoenfeld, of the Hudson Institute, says, “The selectivity of the prosecutions here is nightmarish. It’s a broken system.”
Mark Feldstein, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, warns that, if whistle-blowers and other dissenters are singled out for prosecution, “this has gigantic repercussions. You choke off the information that the public needs to judge policy.”
Few people are more disturbed about Drake’s prosecution than the others who spoke out against the N.S.A. surveillance program. In 2008, Thomas Tamm, a Justice Department lawyer, revealed that he was one of the people who leaked to the Times. He says of Obama, “It’s so disappointing from someone who was a constitutional-law professor, and who made all those campaign promises.” The Justice Department recently confirmed that it won’t pursue charges against Tamm. Speaking before Congress, Attorney General Holder explained that “there is a balancing that has to be done . . . between what our national-security interests are and what might be gained by prosecuting a particular individual.” The decision provoked strong criticism from Republicans, underscoring the political pressures that the Justice Department faces when it backs off such prosecutions. Still, Tamm questions why the Drake case is proceeding, given that Drake never revealed anything as sensitive as what appeared in the Times. “The program he talked to the Baltimore Sun about was a failure and wasted billions of dollars,” Tamm says. “It’s embarrassing to the N.S.A., but it’s not giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
Mark Klein, the former A.T. & T. employee who exposed the telecom-company wiretaps, is also dismayed by the Drake case. “I think it’s outrageous,” he says. “The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers.” ♦
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
-
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/16/indiana-court-strips-citizens-of-right-to-resist-unlawful-police-entry/
And your thoughts BD?
GM,
I suspect this might lead to another 4 day discussion, but the 4th amendment exists for a reason. I can't for the life of me think of a good reason to take away a right to protect oneself against an unlawful entry, no matter who is doing the entering.
-
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/16/indiana-court-strips-citizens-of-right-to-resist-unlawful-police-entry/
And your thoughts BD?
GM,
I suspect this might lead to another 4 day discussion, but the 4th amendment exists for a reason. I can't for the life of me think of a good reason to take away a right to protect oneself against an unlawful entry, no matter who is doing the entering.
As I read the ruling, this is there relavant part to me:
We believe however that a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Nowadays, an aggrieved arrestee has means unavailable at common law for redress against unlawful police action. E.g., Warner, supra, at 330 (citing the dangers of arrest at common law—indefinite detention, lack of bail, disease-infested prisons, physical torture—as reasons for recognizing the
5
right to resist); State v. Hobson, 577 N.W.2d 825, 835–36 (Wis. 1998) (citing the following modern developments: (1) bail, (2) prompt arraignment and determination of probable cause, (3) the exclusionary rule, (4) police department internal review and disciplinary procedure, and (5) civil remedies). We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest—as evident by the facts of this instant case. E.g., Hobson, 577 N.W.2d at 836 (―But in arrest situations that are often ripe for rapid escalation, one‘s ‗measured‘ response may fast become excessive.‖). Further, we note that a warrant is not necessary for every entry into a home. For example, officers may enter the home if they are in ―hot pursuit‖ of the arrestee or if exigent circumstances justified the entry. E.g., United States v. Santana, 427 U.S. 38, 42–43 (1976) (holding that retreat into a defendant‘s house could not thwart an otherwise proper arrest made in the course of a ―hot pursuit‖); Holder v. State, 847 N.E.2d 930, 938 (Ind. 2006) (―Possible imminent destruction of evidence is one exigent circumstance that may justify a warrantless entry into a home if the fear on the part of the police that the evidence was immediately about to be destroyed is objectively reasonable.‖). Even with a warrant, officers may have acted in good faith in entering a home, only to find later that their entry was in error. E.g., Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 11 (1994); United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 922–25 (1984). In these situations, we find it unwise to allow a homeowner to adjudge the legality of police conduct in the heat of the moment. As we decline to recognize a right to resist unlawful police entry into a home, we decline to recognize a right to batter a police officer as a part of that resistance
Nothing prevents an aggrived party from filing IA complaints, a civil right complaint with the FBI per 42 USC 1983 (There are both civil and criminal liabilities at the federal level for civil rights violations done under the color of authority) as well as state level civil and criminal liability for police misconduct.
-
Hot pursuit is a lawful entry. Imminent destruction of evidence is a lawful entry. So using those as examples to allow unlawful entry is a little weird.
I have taught my children never to assume that a person with a badge at the door is a police officer and to call the police if someone knocks on the door when I am not home. This is common practice, because safety experts realized a long time ago that people can pose as police officers to enter the home.
Why would a court not realize the same thing? Why would someone allow anyone to unlawfully enter a home? An appeal to the FBI ot IA doesn't stop illegal actions froming taking place to begin with.
I am a little surprised by your stance here, to be honest.
-
"I have taught my children never to assume that a person with a badge at the door is a police officer and to call the police..."
I like this advice and the forethought involved. If it is police with no warrant but worthy reasons, no harm is done with a 911 call. If it is false and criminal, the earliest alert has been made.
For hot pursuit to the wrong house or imminent destruction of evidence when you are innocent, you know that is not the case, but that does not change the minds of the officers.
Seems to me there is ground in between granting permission and actively resisting. In hot pursuit or imminent destruction, misguided or not, they will be coming in whether you open the door or not. I still like the idea that for kids home alone or for wife and kids with any doubt, you don't open the door.
-
Hot pursuit is a lawful entry. Imminent destruction of evidence is a lawful entry. So using those as examples to allow unlawful entry is a little weird.
I have taught my children never to assume that a person with a badge at the door is a police officer and to call the police if someone knocks on the door when I am not home. This is common practice, because safety experts realized a long time ago that people can pose as police officers to enter the home.
Why would a court not realize the same thing? Why would someone allow anyone to unlawfully enter a home? An appeal to the FBI ot IA doesn't stop illegal actions froming taking place to begin with.
I am a little surprised by your stance here, to be honest.
How in the heat of the moment are you going to determine if the entry by the officers is legal or illegal? in that moment, how are you going to calibrate your use of force for those circumstances?
If one ever needs to determine LE status, 9-1-1 is the place to start, see what dispatch says.
-
Hmmm , , , lets see. I am on the can and someone knocks on the door shouting "Police!". I flush the toilet to go answer the door, but whoops! no need! They have kicked in the door and are in my house. For the sake of argument, lets say they are undercover. What could go wrong here? What remedy? Apparently my flushing the toilet is now , , , probable cause? Indeed any hurried noises (e.g. a naked woman looking to clother herself quickly) are now probable cause?
Call 911 to verify that the folks on the other side of the door are police. Is this really a serious suggestion? Have you ever tried calling 911? I did once to report some bangers breaking into a car. By the time the brain dead moron answering the phone allowed me to give the facts, the bangers were gone. Here, just how long is it going to take the person answering the call to confirm or deny those guys at my door. Somehow I seriously doubt it will be timely enough so as to be meaningful , , ,
-
http://policelink.monster.com/training/articles/2078-supreme-court-further-clarifies-knock-and-announce-rule-
In United States v. Banks, 124 S.Ct. 521 (2003), the Supreme Court further clarified the rules regarding knocking an announcing during the execution of search warrants. The Court has decided a number of cases pertaining to this issue over the last several terms.
A brief review of the cases provides guidance into this critical police task.
In Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927 (1995), the Court held that whether or not officers knock and announce during the execution of a search warrant will factor into whether the manner in which the warrant was executed was reasonable. Thus Rule #1 is “knocking and announcing” is a factor that a court will consider with respect to the reasonableness of the execution of a search warrant.
In Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385 (1997), the Court held that a “no-knock” warrant meets constitutional standards where an officer, in the warrant application provides “reasonable grounds to expect futility or to suspect that one or another such exigency already exists or will arise instantly upon knocking.” Richards v. Wisconsin further held that even if officers have not sought a “no-knock” warrant but are met with similar exigent circumstances when they arrive on the scene, they may dispense with the need to knock and announce their presence.
Thus, Rule #2 allow police to obtain a no-knock warrant when they can articulate exigency prior to the time of the execution of the warrant and
Rule #3 allows police to dispense with their knock and announcement when exigency develops upon their execution of the warrant.
Finally, in United States v. Ramirez, 523 U.S. 65 (1998), the Court held “that police in exigent circumstances may damage premises so far as necessary for a no-knock entrance without demonstrating the suspect risk in any more detail than the law demands for an unannounced intrusion simply by lifting the latch.”
Rule #4 Police may cause reasonable damage in effecting a no-knock entry.
The Court faced a new issue in United States v. Banks. Federal agents along with members of the North Las Vegas Police Department developed information that Banks was dealing drugs. The officers sought and obtained a search warrant for Banks’ two-bedroom apartment.
The officers responded to Banks’s apartment at 2:00 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon. The officers knocked on the front door and shouted “police search warrant” loud enough so that officers at the rear of the building heard the officers. The officers waited for 15 to 20 seconds and then forced the door open with a battering ram. Banks later testified that he did not hear the officers knock because he was in the shower and did not know the police were there until he heard the crash of the battering ram through his door. Officers seized crack cocaine and weapons as well as other evidence.
Banks’s argument before the Supreme Court was that it was unreasonable for the police to enter his home after waiting only 15-20 seconds. He argued that it would take a person more time than 15-20 seconds to get to their door.
In analyzing the facts of this case the Court indicated that the focus was not on how long it would take someone to get to their front door, but rather, how long it would take someone to destroy the evidence the police were seeking. The Court provided an example of officers looking for a stolen piano obviously having to wait longer than officers seeking drugs that can quite easily be flushed down a toilet. By focusing on the time it would take a person to begin the act of destroying evidence, the Court avoided making fine distinctions based on the size of the residence to be searched. Thus, the owner of a mansion does not get a longer reprieve from a forced police entry since it may take him or her longer to get to the front door since the focus is evidence destruction that may take place anywhere within the residence.
The Court concluded that the officers acted reasonably in this case when they forced entry after waiting only 15-20 seconds. The Court noted that the warrant was executed at a time of day when a person would likely be up and around; officers in the rear of the building heard the announcement; and 15-20 seconds would be enough time for a drug dealer to get to a toilet or sink to begin the process of getting rid of the drugs sought by the police. The Court asserted: “it is imminent disposal, not travel time to the entrance [of the residence], that governs when the police may reasonably enter, since the bathroom and the kitchen are usually in the interior of a dwelling, not the front hall, there is no reason generally to peg the travel time to the location of the door, and no reliable basis for giving the proprietor of a mansion a longer wait than the resident of a bungalow, or an apartment like Banks’s. And 15 to 20 seconds does not seem an unrealistic guess about the time someone would need to get in a position to rid his quarters of cocaine.”
Rule #5 Officers may force entry after knocking and announcing where, based upon the nature of the evidence, exigent circumstances have developed because the occupants have not opened the door in a time frame that would allow the occupants time to begin destroying evidence.
Note, the Court mentioned that the case at issue involved a serious offense and expressed that they were not addressing a no-knock entry based upon exigent circumstances for a minor offense.
-
EXECUTING A SEARCH WARRANT
Model Policy
Effective Date
December 1, 1989
Subject
Executing a Search
Warrant
Distribution
Reevaluation Date
November 30, 1990
PURPOSE
The purpose of this policy is to provide law enforcement officers with
guidelines for the execution of a search warrant.
POLICY
It is the policy of this law enforcement agency to (1) provide
techniques to accomplish a thorough and legal search; (2) observe the
constitutional rights of the person(s) the warrant is being served
upon; (3) minimize the level of intrusion experienced by those who are
having their premises searched; (4) provide for the highest degree of
safety for all persons concerned; and (5) establish a record of the
entire execution process.
DEFINITIONS
A.
Search Site:
The premises or person to be searched, as
explicitly stated in the search warrant.
B.
Search Personnel:
Law enforcement officers and supporting
personnel taking part in the execution of a search warrant.
C.
Evidence Collector:
Member of the search team responsible for
the possession, packaging, sealing and marking of all items
seized.
D.
Supervising Officer: Search team member most knowledgeable about
the case and/or responsible for the investigation.
PROCEDURES
A.
Uniform and Equipment Requirements
1.
The search team shall at all times include at least one
uniformed officer.
All non-uniformed officers shall be
clearly identified as law enforcement officers by wearing a
distinctive armband, jacket or some other indicator of
office.
2.
All members of the search team should be equipped with body
armor and a safety holster.
B.
Time Limitations on Search Warrant Execution
1.
A search warrant shall be executed as soon as practicable
within the conditions stated in state law.
Circumstances
that may necessitate a delay in executing a search warrant
include, but are not limited to:
a.
The need to have many searches occur at the same
time, which requires coordination and mobilization of
law enforcement resources.
b.
The seizable items have not arrived at the search
site.
c.
The probability that substantial resistance will be
encountered.
d.
A particular person(s) is absent from the search
site, and the supervisory officer feels that the
search would best be conducted if that person were
present.
e.
The need to protect an informant's identity.
2.
Absent court approval necessity or authorization by law, a
search should be conducted during daylight hours.
Preparation for Execution of Warrant
1.
Prior to entering the premises, the supervisory officer
shall conduct a pre-entry briefing of the execution process
with all search team personnel. The briefing shall include
a review of the actual order of operations and procedures
the search personnel will follow, a simulation of the
conditions of the search site (using maps, charts and
diagrams, when appropriate) and tactics and equipment to be
used in the event of forced entry.
2.
The supervisory officer shall attempt to determine if any
circumstances have changed that make executing the search
warrant at that time undesirable.
3.
The supervisory officer shall ensure that the entire search
warrant execution process is documented, from beginning to
end, and continued until the search team leaves the
premises.
A written record shall be supported by
photographs and, if practical, a videotaping of the entire
search site from start to finish.
Entry Procedures
1.
The approach to the scene shall be executed without sirens.
If a pre-execution surveillance team is on the scene, radio
contact shall be made to ensure that it is an appropriate
time to serve the search warrant.
2.
The supervisory officer shall be responsible for ensuring
that the search warrant is valid and that the property
about to be searched is the property listed on the warrant.
3.
The supervisory officer shall ensure that the entry is tape
recorded.
4.
The search personnel shall position themselves in the
following manner:
a.
Exits from the premises shall be covered.
b.
Uniformed officers shall be the most visible members
of the search team, and shall conduct the entry.
c.
Non-uniformed officers shall be the last members to
enter the search site.
5.
Notification
a.
The supervisory officer, or a uniformed officer,
shall notify persons inside the search site, in a
voice loud enough to be heard inside the premises,
that he/she is a police officer and has a warrant to
search the premises, and that he/she demands entry to
the premises at once.
(GM-I have had training that said to use the PA system from a police vehicle to announce the Search Warrant "Knock and announce" so the demand for entry is heard no only by the residence of the house to be searched, but by everyone in the proximity who could later be called as witnesses as to the loudness of the announcement for the demand to enter.)
b.No-knock entries shall be made in accordance with
state law.
On Premises Activities
1.
The supervisory officer shall ensure that a member of the
search team conducts a security sweep of the search site.
2.
After the search site has been secured, search personnel
shall develop a prioritized strategy that details the
likely whereabouts of the items to be seized and an order
of operation for conducting the search.
One
person
shall
be
designated
as
responsible
for
collecting, preserving and documenting all items seized
until possession is transferred to the evidence custodian.
If damage occurs during an entry to premises that will be
left vacant, and the damage may leave the premises
vulnerable to security problems, arrangements shall be made
to guard the premises until it can be secured.
If damage occurs, a special report shall be prepared on the
actions that caused the damage and a detailed description
of the nature and extent of the damage.
3.
4.
5.
BY ORDER OF
_________________________
CHIEF OF POLICE
This model policy is intended to serve as a guide for the police executive who is interested
in formulating a written procedure to govern executing a search warrant. The police executive
is advised to refer to all federal state and municipal statutes ordinances,
regulations and
judicial and administrative decisions to ensure that the policy he or she seeks to implement
meets the unique needs of the jurisdiciton. 1 / 3
-
The “knock and announce” rule requires the officers to announce their presence and authority. The officers need not actually knock on the target dwelling’s door for compliance nor must they state any “magic words.” A reviewing court will be interested in whether the occupants have been adequately alerted to the officers’ presence and authority and been given the opportunity to comply. The use of a bullhorn or other appropriate means is acceptable.4
Once the officers have notified the occupants of their intentions, they must allow those inside a reasonable chance to act lawfully.5 The time required varies from case to case. Many courts have permitted officers to enter after waiting more than five seconds.6 Likewise, many courts have found entry at five seconds or less to be unreasonable.7 However, no such “bright line” five second rule exists.
Each case must turn on its own facts. Certain instances will require more time. For instance, officers serving a warrant in the late evening or early
4 U.S. v. Spike, 158 F.3d 913 (6th Cir. 1998)
5 U.S. v. Dice, 200 F.3d 978 (6th Cir. 2000)
6 U.S. v. Markling, 7 F.3d 1309 (7th Cir. 1993); U.S. v. Spriggs, 996 F.2d 320 (D.C. Cir. 1993); U.S. v. Ramos, 923 F.2d 1346 (9th Cir. 1991); U.S. v. Myers, 106 F.3d 936 (10th Cir. 1997); U.S. v. Knapp, 1 F.3d 1026 (10th Cir. 1993); U.S. v. Gatewood, 60 F.3d 248 (6th Cir. 1995)
7 U.S. v. Moore, 91 F.3d 96 (10th Cir. 1996); U.S. v. Lucht, 18 F.3d 541 (8th Cir. 1994); U.S. v. Marts, 986 F.2d 1216 (8th Cir. 1993) morning hours must take into account that they must awake the occupants, who must gather their senses, and perhaps dress themselves before responding. In other circumstances, such as when there is a barking dog, the law may require less time before the officers force entry into the dwelling.8
Once the occupants have rejected the officers’ request to enter the dwelling peacefully, force may be used. Refused admittance need not be an affirmative refusal. Officers can infer refusal from circumstances such as the failure of occupants to respond,9 the sound of evidence being destroyed,10 or of fleeing suspects.11
-
GM, I don't understand the point of your most recent three posts. The first two relate to the execution of search warrants, which is lawful entry. The third one is interesting, but of the entire string cite of cases only one them is binding on Indiana (the state from which this current line of discussion stems) and a single, different case is applicable in California (Guro's state of residence, and thus the likely source of his query).
-
BD,
I was responding to Crafty's post, although I cannot vouch for the professionalism (or lack thereof) of dispatch or the local level law enforcement in any given area.
-
"An appeal to the FBI ot IA doesn't stop illegal actions froming taking place to begin with. "
Reasonable, rational law enforcement officers tend to try to perform their duties in such a way as to avoid being the subject of civil and criminal liability.
-
BD,
I was responding to Crafty's post, although I cannot vouch for the professionalism (or lack thereof) of dispatch or the local level law enforcement in any given area.
Thank you for the clarification.
-
"An appeal to the FBI ot IA doesn't stop illegal actions froming taking place to begin with. "
Reasonable, rational law enforcement officers tend to try to perform their duties in such a way as to avoid being the subject of civil and criminal liability.
In that case, reasonable, rational LEOs shouldn't be all that concerned about individuals who react to illegal entries. They won't happen. Right?
-
The concern is with those indidividuals who think they know what is illegal and don't. In the heat of the moment isn't the time to try to adjudicate such things, is it?
-
The concern is with those indidividuals who think they know what is illegal and don't. In the heat of the moment isn't the time to try to adjudicate such things, is it?
Don't trained LEOs know when a search/entry is illegal? If so, why are they acting in an irresponsible manner?
-
I think if' you read the case law, you'll find that sometimes it's unclear if a warrantless entry will be ruled to be legal until it goes before the court who'll judge it on the totality of the circumstances. Many times, officers must make decision in a compressed time frame that are later contemplated at the leisure of the court. There are many disincentives to discourage officers from acting in bad faith in these scenarios.
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/march_2011/copy_of_perspective
Although courts have long recognized the existence of an exigent circumstance exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, the Supreme Court’s decisions in Brigham City and Fisher provide much-needed guidance to officers who routinely confront situations, such as those present in these two cases. Reliance on an objective reasonableness standard allows for scrutiny based on the facts and circumstances confronting law enforcement at the time, as opposed to guesswork regarding the officers’ intentions and consideration of information learned after the fact. The legal standard set forth by the Court in these cases enables officers to make onthe- spot decisions as to whether they should enter a home or other dwelling to resolve an emergency situation. Because the government has the burden of justifying warrantless searches and seizures occurring under this exception, officers need to fully articulate the specific facts and circumstances known to them at the time they acted. This is essential because the courts use an examination of the totality of the circumstances to determine whether officers had reasonable grounds to act.
-
"I can't for the life of me think of a good reason to take away a right to protect oneself against an unlawful entry, no matter who is doing the entering."
-
I am not often advised that I should read more case law. I agree that there are disincentives in place to reign in officers acting in bad faith. And taking away a natural right of self defense is taking away one of those reasons for police officers from acting in exactly that manner.
Under what other conditions do you think it is acceptable to limit the natural right of self defense?
I think if' you read the case law, you'll find that sometimes it's unclear if a warrantless entry will be ruled to be legal until it goes before the court who'll judge it on the totality of the circumstances. Many times, officers must make decision in a compressed time frame that are later contemplated at the leisure of the court. There are many disincentives to discourage officers from acting in bad faith in these scenarios.
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/march_2011/copy_of_perspective
Although courts have long recognized the existence of an exigent circumstance exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, the Supreme Court’s decisions in Brigham City and Fisher provide much-needed guidance to officers who routinely confront situations, such as those present in these two cases. Reliance on an objective reasonableness standard allows for scrutiny based on the facts and circumstances confronting law enforcement at the time, as opposed to guesswork regarding the officers’ intentions and consideration of information learned after the fact. The legal standard set forth by the Court in these cases enables officers to make onthe- spot decisions as to whether they should enter a home or other dwelling to resolve an emergency situation. Because the government has the burden of justifying warrantless searches and seizures occurring under this exception, officers need to fully articulate the specific facts and circumstances known to them at the time they acted. This is essential because the courts use an examination of the totality of the circumstances to determine whether officers had reasonable grounds to act.
-
"Under what other conditions do you think it is acceptable to limit the natural right of self defense?"
I can think of a few I went through first hand. One was responding to a call where a woman that was reported to have been drinking and ingesting chemicals and was reported to be brandishing a firearm with a young child in the home with her. It wasn't my jurisdiction, but I was closest to the scene and requested by the Sheriff's Dept. to respond to the call with the above information relayed to me through my dispatch. I arrived at the residence, knocked at the door and announced my presence. No response. Deciding there were exigent circumstances, I made entry into the house. I located a female party unconscious on the floor in a child's room. The child was in a crib, unharmed. A medium frame revolver was visible on a shelf in the room, the adult female didn't awaken when I cuffed her, secured the revolver and awaited the arrival of the responding deputy.
If that female subject had been awake, did she have the natural right of self defense against a warrantless entry by a tribal police officer into her home?
-
Was it an illegal entry? That has been my focus the whole time.
"Under what other conditions do you think it is acceptable to limit the natural right of self defense?"
I can think of a few I went through first hand. One was responding to a call where a woman that was reported to have been drinking and ingesting chemicals and was reported to be brandishing a firearm with a young child in the home with her. It wasn't my jurisdiction, but I was closest to the scene and requested by the Sheriff's Dept. to respond to the call with the above information relayed to me through my dispatch. I arrived at the residence, knocked at the door and announced my presence. No response. Deciding there were exigent circumstances, I made entry into the house. I located a female party unconscious on the floor in a child's room. The child was in a crib, unharmed. A medium frame revolver was visible on a shelf in the room, the adult female didn't awaken when I cuffed her, secured the revolver and awaited the arrival of the responding deputy.
If that female subject had been awake, did she have the natural right of self defense against a warrantless entry by a tribal police officer into her home?
-
I don't think so. I turned the scene over to the responding deputy, briefed him on what had happened. I wrote a report detailing what I had done. Never questioned about it by my chain of command. I never got a complaint, I never was subpoenaed to testify in court about it, so I assume the case was plea barganed.
Do you think that was legal?
-
I only have the information you gave me, but based on that information: yes.
What I don't know is, among other things: who reported her (i.e., was it a p.o.'d ex to get back at her; was it someone with a history of calling "wolf" to the local PD, etc.); what was the age of the child (young depends in part on context); etc.
Reminder: the article I posted that led to this line of questioning specifically that the Indiana court decision "effectively means that officers may enter any residence without warrant, probable cause or permission of the owner." It seems to me that you DID have probable cause.
Again, the starting point is illegal entry, GM. So, I am led to believe that you find no problems with police, who are government agents, illegally entering one's residence. So much for the Bill of Rights, I guess.
-
What I don't know is, among other things: who reported her (i.e., was it a p.o.'d ex to get back at her; was it someone with a history of calling "wolf" to the local PD, etc.); what was the age of the child (young depends in part on context); etc.
Yeah, hopefully dispatch has made some determinations to that effect. When you catch a call like that, you often have very limited amounts of infomation while you run code to the location. Thus is the reality of police work.
Can you give me a scenario where you have a case of illegal entry by law enforcement and how self defense would provide an effective resolution to that?
-
Yeah, hopefully dispatch has made some determinations to that effect. When you catch a call like that, you often have very limited amounts of infomation while you run code to the location. Thus is the reality of police work.
Can you give me a scenario where you have a case of illegal entry by law enforcement and how self defense would provide an effective resolution to that?
Hmmm, well you (plural) are gutsy to do that job. That isn't much information to work on. And please don't think I am trying to be disrespectful to the LEOs. Not a chance. You do good work, and I am honored to be friends with many.
I'd rather not try to come up with a hypothetical scenario. I do know that any other situation that I can think of at this hour, whether or not I am able have an "effective resolution," I am able to legally act in self defense. And that is what bothers me enough to have posted the original link.
-
Here is the problem, most people can't tell you who the vice president is and are pretty darn fuzzy on the rest of the facts about the constitution, laws and everything else about our system. I still have people tell me they think that shooting someone outside their home and then dragging the decendent inside and planting a knife in their hand is a good idea. This, after years of CSI: Wherever that has juries demanding forensic techniques that exist only in some screenwriter's imagination.
I don't think the idea floating around of using self defense on the police is going to work out well for either the public at large or law enforcement. There are already legal disincentives for police misconduct, and if those don't deter bad cops, the idea of "self defense" certainly won't.
-
"There are already legal disincentives for police misconduct,"
which as a practical matter are often meaningless
"and if those don't deter bad cops,"
and sometimes they don't,
"the idea of "self defense" certainly won't."
If a rogue cop is attacking you, you have a right to defend yourself. In the American Creed, our rights come from our Creator. Amongst these rights is the right to self-defense. It IS that simple.
-
Can you cite any examples of lawful self defense against illegal police conduct in the US?
-
No.
That said, it seems to me quite feasible that in such cases, no one have a motive to go public with it.
-
Do you think that if you defend yourself against an officer you deem to be acting illegally, that he just goes on his way and nothing else comes from that?
-
The article in question has to do with illegal searches, not what a private citizen "deems" to be an illegal search. And at this point I would also like to note Guro's response above.
-
Until someone in a black robe deems a legal or illegal search/seizure, how do we know it's status?
-
Who is "we"?
-
You, me, any other interested observer.
Until Terry v. Ohio was decided, was it possible to say with any assurance the legitimacy of Det. McFadden's stop and frisk of John Terry?
-
Can you cite any examples of lawful self defense against illegal police conduct in the US?
Randy Weaver comes close. Alas, in most instances he who writes the police report defines the legality of the conduct, and few citizens write police reports.
-
Do you see Randy Weaver as some kind of hero? I don't. He was effective in hiding behind his wife and kids, I'll give him that.
-
Dude, don't ask questions if you don't want them answered, and if you get an answer that doesn't conform to your screed du jour how about if you respond to the point rather than sliding into the ad hominen?
-
I'll agree with your point that whomever writes the report tends to shape the narrative in the legal proceeding.
-
Recently, I listened to a police interrogation on tape; then I read the report written by the detective.
"shape the narrative"? The report was unbelievably one sided. Another reason to say nothing until your attorney is there.
-
Recently, I listened to a police interrogation on tape; then I read the report written by the detective.
"shape the narrative"? The report was unbelievably one sided. Another reason to say nothing until your attorney is there.
That detective will get toasted by any semi-compitent defense atty with the report and tape.
-
You, me, any other interested observer.
Until Terry v. Ohio was decided, was it possible to say with any assurance the legitimacy of Det. McFadden's stop and frisk of John Terry?
I just don't understand the way that you obfuscate the issues at hand, GM. The question is the rights of people to resist illegal entry into their home. I seriously think that sometimes you don't read carefully. Or do you just make [stuff] up? Or do you just keep going and going like the bunny with nowhere to go?
-
Please cite some case law that is more relevant then. Terry v. Ohio was pretty important search and seizure case law that codified "stop and frisk" methods for LE.
-
Well Terry is relevant to making the point that it is not always known what the law is until after the fact, but still the question presented remains.
-
In US legal history, there are police methods that were struck down by the courts that had been a historic standard practice in law enforcement. The 60's/70's had lots of profound limitations placed on police that hadn't existed before.
The use of force, including deadly force on fleeing felons dates back hundred of years to England's common law, but ended here in 1985. When that Memphis Officer shot Garner, he was acting in compliance with both Tenn. state law and MPD policy. It was reasonable to believe it was a lawful seizure given those circumstances, the SCOTUS disagreed.
So, even if the officer acts in good faith and in compliance with dept. policy and state law doesn't mean those actions will ultimately be ruled lawful by the court.
-
OK, but not sure how that connects to the question presented , , ,
-
So, even if the officer acts in good faith and in compliance with dept. policy and state law doesn't mean those actions will ultimately be ruled lawful by the court.
Unless/until someone in a black robe gives the thumbs up/thumbs down on an officer's actions, how does the officer or the person who in the heat of the moment believes the officer's entrance into their home is illegal, know if the entry is legal or not? Under exegent circumstances that might justify a warrantless entry, the officer/s are probably not going to sit down with the resident and debate the point over a cup of chai.
-
Would this situation have been improved by the plaintiffs using force against the officers?
http://www.sdsheriff.net/legalupdates/docs/0411.pdf
Huff v. City of Burbank (9th Cir. Jan. 11, 2011) 632 F.3rd 539
Rule: A non-consensual, warrantless entry into a residence cannot be justified by an
unsubstantiated rumor.
Facts: Burbank Police Officers responded to a high school to investigate a report by the
principal concerning rumors that a student, Vincent Huff, had written a letter threatening
to “shoot up” the school. Principal Sister Milner, concerned about the safety of her
students, asked the officers to investigate. Several other students were interviewed, but
the officers couldn’t verify the existence of such a letter. Vincent hadn’t been at school
for two days. So they decided to go to Vincent’s home where he lived with his parents,
George and Maria. At the Huff residence, no one responded when the officers knocked
at the door and announced their presence. The officers called the residence by telephone,
but no one answered. They then called Maria’s cell phone. Maria answered. Informed
that the officers wished to talk to her and her son, she hung up on them. Two minutes
later, Maria and Vincent came out on the front steps. When the officers told them that
they were there investigating some threats at the school, Vincent responded; “I can’t
believe you’re here for that.” Maria was asked if they could go inside to talk, to which
Maria responded; “No,” not without a warrant. Asked if there were any guns in the
home, Maria avoided the question and responded that she would get her husband. She
then turned and went into the house. One of the officers followed her in. Vincent and a
second officer also went inside. One of the officers testified to making entry into the
8
house out of concern for their safety. Two other officers entered the house after
everyone else. The officers all remained in the living room as George entered the room
and challenged their authority for being there. After a five to ten minute conversation in
the living room, upon satisfying themselves that the rumors about shooting up the school
were false, the officers all left. The Huffs thereafter sued the Burbank Police Department
and the officers involved in federal court. The trial court found for the civil defendants
after a two-day bench trial. The Plaintiff Huffs appealed.
Held: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal reversed. The issue on appeal was whether
upon making the warrantless entry into the Huff’s residence, the officers had probable
cause and exigent circumstances. The Ninth Circuit ruled that they had neither and that
the entry into the Huff residence was done in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Likening the officers’ entry of the Huff home to an entry done for the purpose of
conducting a warrantless search, the Court held that such an entry is lawful only when
officers have “a reasonable belief that their entry is necessary to prevent physical harm to
the officers or other persons, the destruction of relevant evidence, the escape of the
suspect, or some other consequence improperly frustrating legitimate law enforcement
efforts.” The Court interpreted this requirement as requiring “probable cause.” But you
can’t justify probable cause on information that amounts to no more than an
unsubstantiated rumor. Secondly, even if the officers had probable cause, there must also
be “exigent circumstances” requiring an immediate entry. The exigent circumstances
argued here by the civil defendants was for the safety of the officers or the occupants of
the house. The civil defendants (i.e., officers) argued that, in addition to the rumor
concerning Vincent possibly threatening to shoot up the school, the following facts were
sufficient to warrant a finding of exigent circumstances: (1) The unusual behavior of the
parents in not answering the door or the telephone; (2) Maria hanging up on the officers
when they finally reached her on her cell phone; (3) Maria not inquiring about the reason
for their visit or expressing concern that they were investigating her son; (4) Maria
refusing to tell the officers whether there were any guns in the house; and (5) Maria
running back into the house while being questioned about the possible presence of
firearms. These facts, per the Court, amounted to no more than “speculation” on the part
of the officers that their safety was in jeopardy. Lastly, the Court noted that although not
argued by the civil defendants, the “emergency circumstances” theory also fails to justify
a warrantless entry into the home. “Emergency circumstances,” allowing for a
warrantless entry into a residence, may be found when officers reasonably believe entry
is necessary to protect or preserve life or avoid serious injury. “Probable cause” is not
necessary. But the officers must have “some reasonable basis, approximating probable
cause, to associate the emergency with the area or place to be searched.” In this case the
Court found that there was “no objectively reasonable basis for concluding that there was
an immediate need to protect others or themselves from serious harm.” The entry of the
house, therefore, was in violation of the Fourth Amendment, providing the Huffs with a
cause of action for civil damages.
Note: This case is so screwy, and so wrong, that I almost didn’t brief it. In justifying
their belief that the entry into the house was illegal, the Court wanders through all sorts of
irrelevant legal theories, using tests and factors applicable to searches. Although this
9
case involved a warrantless entry into a residence, it did not involve a search. Same
constitutional amendment—the Fourth—but different problem altogether. This case
involved officers trying to protect themselves while responding to a situation reportedly
involving firearms. Although I don’t have a case directly on point supporting my
argument, it seems to me that if an officer can pat a person down for weapons based upon
no more than a “reasonable suspicion,” then they should be allowed to follow an
uncooperative homeowner into the house under circumstances that would lead any
reasonable officer to believe that she just might be intending to fetch a firearm. The
United States Supreme Court has already rejected the Ninth Circuits attempts to fit
potentially dangerous situations into neat little categories meant for searches. In Brigham
City v. Stuart (2006) 547 U.S. 398, the High Court upheld a warrantless residential entry
in a case involving “an objectively reasonable basis for believing” that someone may
suffer serious injury if an immediate entry is not made. As for the dangerousness of the
situation in the Huff case, the Court failed to mention Vincent’s very telling remark; “I
can’t believe you’re here for that.” While this might very well be interpreted as
Vincent’s denial that he ever intended a threat, it also serves as validation for the
argument that he did in fact say or write something that could be interpreted as a threat to
shoot up his school. So were the officers, while responding to a report potentially
involving firearms and a threatened school shooting, when confronted by some very
uncooperative parents of the potential shooter, justifiably concerned for their own safety
when the parent suddenly decided to disappear back into her house during an inquiry
about weapons? In my humble opinion; you betcha!
-
I wear a black robe, at least ocasionally. I am excited that I get to play a role in making these types of decisions. 8-)
I think that you give too much credit to the USSC (or perhaps rely too much) assuming that is the court you meant when you stated that "even if the officer acts in good faith and in compliance with dept. policy and state law doesn't mean those actions will ultimately be ruled lawful by the court." Given that the USSC currently hears about .01% of the cases that are appealled to it, and not all of them relate to police actions, the odds aren't all that good that a particular police action will be reviewed by the highest court.
The basis for the Fourth Amendment, which has its basis in English Common Law, as does most of American law:
"The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England cannot enter – all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!" William Pitt
As for a list of cases, here you go:
John Bad Elk v. United States, 177 U.S. 529 (1900):
Held, that the court clearly erred in charging that the policemen had the right to arrest the plaintiff in error and to use such force as was necessary to accomplish the arrest, and that the plaintiff in error had no right to resist it.
At common law, if a party resisted arrest by an officer without warrant, and who had no right to arrest him, and if, in the course of that resistance, the officer was killed, the offence of the party resisting arrest would be reduced from what would have been murder, if the officer had had the right to arrest, to manslaughter.
"If the officer had no right to arrest, the other party might resist the illegal attempt to arrest him, using no more force than was absolutely necessary to repel the assault constituting the attempt to arrest."
United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581 (1948): "One has an undoubted right to resist an unlawful arrest, and courts will uphold the right of resistance in proper cases."
Miller v. United States, 357 U.S. 301 (1958): Held: petitioner could not lawfully be arrested in his home by officers breaking in without first giving him notice of their authority and purpose...
PAYTON V. NEW YORK, 445 U. S. 573 (1980): Held: The Fourth Amendment, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits the police from making a warrantless and nonconsensual entry into a suspect's home in order to make a routine felony arrest. Pp. 445 U. S. 583-603.
And here is some commentary on the Indiana Supreme Court decision.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/88027.html
An interesting line, and one that speaks to your line of thinking, in discussing the Indiana case with a Michigan case: "In the interests of brevity, these rulings should be consolidated under the name “Rapist Doctrine,” in recognition of the fact that are pseudo-scholarly versions of the advice once urged upon women enduring sexual assault: Don’t resist — it will only make things worse."
http://www.libertyflorida.org/?p=563
Even the home schoolers are concerned: http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/in/201105180.asp
And, some commentary on the right to resist unlawful arrest/entry in general:
http://cad.sagepub.com/content/46/4/472.short ("attacks on the common law right are based on a misunderstanding of the original justifications for the right and that there remains a great need for the right particularly as new police tactics increase the probability of arbitrary assertions of authority."
http://www.markmccoy.com/self-defense.html: This site also has many other cases you can look at if you wish.
-
I think that you give too much credit to the USSC, or rely too much is better wording, assuming that is the court you meant when you stated that "even if the officer acts in good faith and in compliance with dept. policy and state law doesn't mean those actions will ultimately be ruled lawful by the court." Given that the USSC currently hears about .01% of the cases that are appealled to it, and not all of them relate to police actions, the odds aren't all that good that a particular police action will be reviewed by the highest court.
I get that very few cases go in front of the supremes. However, every police action has the potential for some level of judicial review. Just because a officer acts in good faith and in compliance with dept. policy and state law does not mean the officer's actions will be upheld by a court.
-
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/88027.html
An interesting line, and one that speaks to your line of thinking, in discussing the Indiana case with a Michigan case: "In the interests of brevity, these rulings should be consolidated under the name “Rapist Doctrine,” in recognition of the fact that are pseudo-scholarly versions of the advice once urged upon women enduring sexual assault: Don’t resist — it will only make things worse."
I'm not sure I'd want to cite anything from Lew Rockwell.
http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/16/who-wrote-ron-pauls-newsletter
Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters?
Libertarian movement veterans, and a Paul campaign staffer, say it was "paleolibertarian" strategist Lew Rockwell
Julian Sanchez & David Weigel | January 16, 2008
Ron Paul doesn't seem to know much about his own newsletters. The libertarian-leaning presidential candidate says he was unaware, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of the bigoted rhetoric about African Americans and gays that was appearing under his name. He told CNN last week that he still has "no idea" who might have written inflammatory comments such as "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks"—statements he now repudiates. Yet in interviews with reason, a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul—all named the same man as Paul's chief ghostwriter: Ludwig von Mises Institute founder Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.
Financial records from 1985 and 2001 show that Rockwell, Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982, was a vice president of Ron Paul & Associates, the corporation that published the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report. The company was dissolved in 2001. During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives," producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic. To this day Rockwell remains a friend and advisor to Paul—accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman's recent writings and audio recordings.
-
Just because someone is wrong about some things doesn't make him wrong about everything.
-
I must confess I'm a bit confused about your takes on some positions, Bigdog. I'm I recall correctly, it's your position OBL should have been arrested (if possible) and given the due process of law, right? Yet an American police officer accused of misconduct shouldn't at least get the same?
-
Why wouldn't an American police officer accused of misconduct not be given the due process of law?
-
Well, if he or she is killed by someone who thinks that they have that right because they deem the officer to have entered their residence illegally.
-
I wish you wouldn't put words in my mouth. I never said that there was some kind of carte blanche right to off police officers, or anyone else. Good grief. In fact, if you look at a few posts back, you will see this included there too:
John Bad Elk v. United States
"If the officer had no right to arrest, the other party might resist the illegal attempt to arrest him, using no more force than was absolutely necessary to repel the assault constituting the attempt to arrest."
-
"If the officer had no right to arrest, the other party might resist the illegal attempt to arrest him, using no more force than was absolutely necessary to repel the assault constituting the attempt to arrest."
Ok BD, how would a reasonable person determine if an officer's attempt to arrest was legal or illegal?
-
GM, you suggested one way that "a reasonable person" could "determine if an officer's attempt to arrest was legal or illegal." Moreover, your point a few days ago about the ignorance of the average man about who is VP, and what is in the Constitution, etc. is true up to a point. There are many, many who are far less ignorant about the law than the average. So, perhaps it is reasonable to expect that some people know what the law is. Or perhaps, it is reasonable to expect that everyone should become more educated about the Constitution and the laws of their state.
Can I safely say that you believe in a living Constitution, since you seem to think that we can't possibly know when entry is illegal before we go to a court of law? Is it true that the 4th Amendment is just a guide, but given that there have been changes made to police techniques and with new technologies, we can disregard the original intent of the Framers and/or the 700 years of precedent (including the common law tradition that is the basis of our legal system)? Will you be voting for President Obama's reelection?
How in the heat of the moment are you going to determine if the entry by the officers is legal or illegal? in that moment, how are you going to calibrate your use of force for those circumstances?
If one ever needs to determine LE status, 9-1-1 is the place to start, see what dispatch says.
-
A momentary tangent:
"Just because someone is wrong about some things doesn't make him wrong about everything."
Certainly this is true, but I for one prefer to note it when there are notorious aspects to someone I quote.
End of tangent.
Carry on.
-
I am certainly willing to note that. I must, I confess, plead ignorance to his notorious side before being edified by GM.
-
Indeed, I too learned of the Rockwell-Rothbard nexus and its ugly concepts thanks to GM.
Returning to the subject at hand, I emailed Mitch Vilos, the author of the "Self-Defense Law in the 50 States" book which we carry in our catalog (also, see the relevant thread on the Martial Arts forum) the URL of this thread. Given his unusually extensive research in this area, I was curious for his input, which he was kind enough to give:
Here it is:
You notice that we did not address this as part of our template for each
state because we felt it was not something that most people would ever have
to consider or anticipate. But, that said, we did come across states that
addressed the issue and as I recall, Indiana was not the only state that had
statutes indicating that citizens are not justified in resisting an unlawful
arrest or entry.
With the disclaimer that I haven't researched it extensively (for reasons
given above), my guess is that this is a huge "thumbs down" factor in any
case. If you resist and bad things happen to a police officer, it's going
to result in arrest, prosecution and possible conviction just because there
tends to be a belief by most potential jurors that policemen can do no wrong
(with some inner city exceptions, of course). Remember, Texas has a strong
home defense statute. But one of the thumbs down factors in the home is if
the intruder is a child. Reference the Texas thumbs down case (Gonzales as
I recall) where the Texas trailer owner shot and killed one of several young
teens in his trailer to steal candy. He was arrested, tried and finally
acquitted, but nevertheless had to endure a life-changing experience. I
suspect that is going to be the way it will be for using or threatening
deadly force against a LEO in most cases. Same with spousal shootings
(Chapter 13). Unless the battered wife gets out of the home, if she shoots
her husband in her own home, she will be arrested and prosecuted. She is
seldom acquitted.
A horrible outgrowth of this issue is going to be home invasions where the
invaders pose as cops. The more this happens, the more homeowners will
shoot to kill no matter that whoever enters is screaming, "police, get
down!!! Hands where we can see them!!!!!" One clue to a real cop entry
might be the "flash-bang." I suspect we'll see more severe penalties for
impersonating LEOs during home invasions for this very reason. It makes the
entry more and more dangerous for the real LEOs. Unfortunately Indiana's
removal of right to resist unlawful police entry gives a signal to home
invaders that impersonating SWAT no knock entries will be the key to
success.
One corollary. The more home invaders impersonate officers, the less likely
a defending citizen will be convicted for using force against unlawful
entries where there is a "reasonable man" standard for self-defense. But
that won't keep citizens from being arrested and prosecuted for using force
against officers even in the event of an unlawful entry.
Hope this gives some helpful insight into the issue. Mitch
-
Well said by Mitch.
Here is the ugly reality, when guns come out, shiite gets real dangerous. This applys to both LEOs and armed citizens. Off duty, plain clothes cops have been shot by uniformed officers responding to a "man with a gun" call. One can have the best intentions in the world and still end up as the shooter or shootee of a blue on blue fatality.
Even best case scenario in a general citizen self-defense shooting or LEO line of duty use of deadly force, the best you can hope for is to keep everything you had at the moment you pressed the trigger. Meaning your life, your freedom, your career, your marriage, your assets.
If you are a citizen, and using force against a LEO, the odds of this turning out well for you is slim and none. Handing violent resistance to arrest is something cops are trained and equipped to do. Both policy and caselaw allow officers to use more force than is being used against them. LEOs are trained and empowered to use whatever force is required to win, including deadly force, if needed.
BD, you asked if I believed in a "living constitution". I'm not sure how to best answer this. I believe that the constitution is our framework and the intent of the founders is very important. I also think the founders intended for there to be law enforcement, and for there to be a common sense balance between individual rights and public safety. I'm most interested in finding that pragmatic sweet spot between either extreme that maximizes individual freedom while having a safe society.
-
"If you are a citizen, and using force against a LEO, the odds of this turning out well for you is slim and none."
With this I completely agree. And court decisions that gut the 4th amendment protections offered in the Bill of Rights, a series of amendments made becuase of the fear of an over reaching government, don't help this.
-
Speaking of which, this from today's LA Times-- a source which I often mock-- but here it reads rather well:
May 23, 2011
One of the most important functions of the Supreme Court is to put legal limits on police excesses. But the court failed to fulfill that responsibility last week when it widened a loophole in the requirement that police obtain a warrant before searching a home.
The 8-1 decision came in the case of a search of an apartment in Kentucky by police who suspected illegal drugs were being destroyed. The police, who said they smelled marijuana near the apartment, had knocked loudly on the door and shouted, "This is the police." Then, after hearing noises they thought indicated the destruction of evidence, they broke down the door.
Related
Court says police may break into homes in certain cases
Carving out class-action exceptions
Supreme Court: Class (action) dismissed
Prop. 8: Who's fit to judge?
Let sun shine on dependency court
For Alejandra Tapia, prison as punishment
See more stories »
XScrutinizing Wal-Mart
Police don't need a warrant to enter a residence when there are "exigent circumstances," such as imminent danger, the possibility that a suspect will escape or concern about the immediate destruction of evidence. But in this case, the police actually created the exigent circumstances that they then capitalized on to conduct the warrantless search.
According to Kentucky's Supreme Court, the exigent-circumstances exception didn't apply because the police should have foreseen that their conduct would lead the occupants of the apartment to destroy evidence. Overturning that finding, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the court that as long as the police officers' behavior was lawful, the fact that it produced an exigent circumstance didn't violate the Constitution. That would be the case, Alito suggested, even if a police officer acted in bad faith in an attempt to evade the warrant requirement.
But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in her dissent, Alito's reasoning "arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, never mind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant."
Ginsburg also dismissed the argument that entering the apartment in the Kentucky case was necessary to prevent the destruction of drug evidence. Quoting the majority opinion, she wrote that "persons in possession of valuable drugs are unlikely to destroy them unless they fear discovery by the police." Therefore, police can take the time to obtain a warrant.
Allowing police to create an exception to the warrant requirement violates the 4th Amendment. That is how the court should have ruled.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
ShareNew(2)
« Previous Story More Editorials Next Story » To fix California's budget, we need taxes too Cellphones: Quieting the public nuisances
Related storiesFrom the L.A. Times
Police arrest suspect in beating of Giants fan at Dodger Stadium
Man suspected in kidnapping of Riverside girl may have more victims
Supreme Court gives police leeway in home searches
From KTLA
Police: Man Runs Over Friend, Officer After Nightclub Fight |ktla.com
Family Turns To Social Media To Find Missing Teen |ktla.com
Around the Web
Supreme Court gives police new entryway into homes |chicagotribune.com
Supreme Court gives police a new entryway into homes |orlandosentinel.com
In San Diego, not your typical police scandal |fox5sandiego.com
Comments (2)Add / View comments | Discussion FAQ
Kiljoy616 at 9:33 AM May 23, 2011
The Constitution a nice idea that is slowly dying out one piece at a time.
southerncalifornia.republican at 12:13 AM May 23, 2011
Finally! An editorial that I completely, 100% agree with. In this case, the court was wrong.
-
Speaking of which, this from today's LA Times-- a source which I often mock-- but here it reads rather well:
Stick with the instinct to mock the Left Angeles Times, it'll always serve you well.
http://www.llrmi.com/articles/legal_update/2011_us_king.shtml
-
Some interesting analysis on the King opinion:
http://reason.com/blog/2011/05/23/the-supreme-courts-advice-abou
http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=119933
http://volokh.com/2011/05/19/common-misreadings-of-kentucky-v-king-and-the-difference-between-exigent-circumstances-and-police-created-exigencies/
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/kentucky-v-king/
http://www.utahdefenders.com/kentucky-v-king-good-for-utah-police-bad-for-our-liberties/
-
Orin Kerr pretty much hammers all the other commenters in his piece on this ruling.
Utahdefenders? Not only was that the lamest bit on the topic, they sound like a superhero group from South Park. :-D
-
Utahdefenders? Not only was that the lamest bit on the topic, they sound like a superhero group from South Park. :-D
Agreed on both counts. And I love the South Park comparison!
-
Speaking of Orin Kerr and the 4th, care to take a crack at this, BD?
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=976296
Four Models of Fourth Amendment Protection
Orin S. Kerr
George Washington University - Law School
Stanford Law Review, Vol. 60, 2007
GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 246
GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 246
Abstract:
The Fourth Amendment protects reasonable expectations of privacy, but the Supreme Court has refused to provide a consistent explanation for what makes an expectation of privacy reasonable. The Court's refusal has disappointed scholars and frustrated students for four decades. This article explains why the Supreme Court cannot provide an answer: No one test can accurately and consistently distinguish less troublesome police practices that do not require Fourth Amendment oversight from more troublesome police practices that are reasonable only if the police have a warrant or compelling circumstances. Instead of endorsing one single approach, the Supreme Court uses four different tests at the same time. There are four models of Fourth Amendment protection: a probabilistic model, a private facts model, a positive law model, and a policy model. The use of multiple models has a major advantage over a singular approach, as it allows the courts to use different approaches in different contexts depending on which can most accurately and consistently identify practices that need Fourth Amendment regulation.
-
"In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg contends that the Court’s decision “arms police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases”; in a largely rhetorical question, she also asks whether our homes will actually remain secure “if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity[.]” To maintain the protections of the Fourth Amendment, she argues, the exigent circumstances must exist “when the police come on the scene, not subsequent to their arrival, prompted by their own conduct.”
"Justice Ginsburg notes that if the police had not knocked, no evidence would have been destroyed; she emphasizes that even the Court’s opinion concedes that “[p]ersons in possession of valuable drugs are unlikely to destroy them unless they fear discovery by the police,” and here the suspects would not have anticipated police discovery but for the knock. The police could have posted officers outside the apartment while obtaining a warrant for entry because there was “very little risk” that the evidence would have been destroyed while awaiting a warrant."
-
The Queen-Mother of the ACLU dissents? No way! :-o
Well, what she leaves out is the totality of the circumstances.
If the facts of the case were that the police in the case just happened to knock at a door, hear sounds of things moving inside and then make a forcible entry based on that alone, then her dissent might make sense. This is only a small portion of the facts at the moment that influenced the decisionmaking of those officers in this case.
-
There are LOTS of circumstances well within the law which will induce people to start moving around when there is a loud knocking on the door of "Its the police!!!
As noted, there was time for a warrant.
" here the suspects would not have anticipated police discovery but for the knock. The police could have posted officers outside the apartment while obtaining a warrant for entry because there was “very little risk” that the evidence would have been destroyed while awaiting a warrant."
-
The officers were chasing a suspect that ran into one of two apartments. There was an odor of marijuana present. If it was reasonable to wait for a warrant, then what circumstances would you find reasonable to enter without a warrant to prevent the destruction of evidence?
-
When it wasn't reasonable to wait for a warrant :-D
And if I remember correctly the suspect did not know the police were after him. He simply went home. The risk of destruction of evidence was triggered by the knock.
The police could have waited while sending for a warrant. Oh wait! Maybe they couldn't have gotten one (on the dealing charge) because they had only a 50% (or less if there were more than two apartments) chance of giving the judge the right address , , , :roll: Is a 50% chance of getting the right place a sufficient % for you?
-
When you run after a suspect that just sold a U/C oficer drugs, and when faced w/ two apartment doors, knock at one and detect the odor of an illegal drug and after announcing "Police" hear sounds which are consistent with the destruction of evidence that might be reasonably expected for those involved in the illegal drug trade to do, would tend to indicate that the officer had selected the correct door and that exigent circumstances exist to prevent the destruction of evidence, even with federally mandated low flow toilets.
-
The wittiness of the lo-flo toilets is noted, as is the failure to note that in point of fact , , , they got the wrong apartment.
-
Yes, but it was reasonable to believe it was the right apartment, and upon making entry there was evidence of criminal acts in plain view of the officers.
-
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=490&invol=386
The "reasonableness" of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. See Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 20-22. The Fourth Amendment is not violated by an arrest based on probable cause, even though the wrong person is arrested, Hill v. California, 401 U.S. 797 (1971), nor by the mistaken execution of a valid search warrant on the wrong premises, Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79 (1987). With respect to a claim of excessive force, the same standard of reasonableness at the moment applies: "Not every push or shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge's chambers," Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d, at 1033, violates the Fourth Amendment. The calculus of reasonableness must embody [490 U.S. 386, 397] allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments - in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving - about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.
-
Those cases, if memory serves, all deal with persons not homes, except for the one with the search warrant at the wrong address. I believe Guro's point is that there is no search warrant. Also, there is an assumption of heighten protection in the home.
-
"Those cases, if memory serves, all deal with persons not homes, except for the one with the search warrant at the wrong address."
The Fourth Amendment "objective reasonableness" standard is used to judge both the search of places and the seizure of persons equally.
"Also, there is an assumption of heighten protection in the home."
Yes there is, there is also a court recognized warrantless exemption regarding exigent circumstances, including the prevention of the immediate destruction of evidence.
http://www.bluesheepdog.com/2011/05/19/kentucky-v-king-supreme-court-on-exigent-circumstances/
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 to overturn the Kentucky suppression. Justice Ginsburg was the sole dissenting opinion. In the Opinion of the Court, written by Justice Alito, it affirmed three areas of exigency that permit a warrantless entry into a home. While the Court only touched on “emergency aid” and “hot pursuit of a fleeing suspect,” at issue in Kentucky v. King is the exception “to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence.”
Justice Alito wrote that lower courts have imposed further requirements to the exigent circumstances rule. The U. S. Supreme Court rejects those restrictions. Simply listed, they are: “bad” faith, reasonable foreseeability, probable cause and time to secure a warrant, and standard or good investigative tactics. In each of these requirements, lower courts have added upon law enforcement additional legal burdens that are not recognized by the Supreme Court with regard to exigent circumstances.
Quoting Graham v. Conner, the Court cited “the calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving.”
Ultimately, the Supreme Court articulated that in Kentucky v. King, the exigency of the possible destruction of evidence did exist and that it was not created by the officers’ knock and announce at the door. The ruling was reversed and remanded for further proceeding in Kentucky.
It is interesting that this type of Fourth Amendment judgment was so overwhelmingly supported by seven of the Justices. I find it refreshing that it seems to hold accountable the actions of the suspects, in refusing to answer the door, for directly contributing to the circumstances that brought about a lawful warrantless entry.
-
Refusing to answer the door is a grounds for kicking it in?
==================================
What’s wrong with the police kicking in the door of an apartment after they smell marijuana drifting from it, if they knock hard, announce who they are and then hear what sounds like evidence being destroyed?
Related in News
Search Allowed if Police Hear Evidence Being Destroyed (May 17, 2011) Some lower courts have said the answer is pretty much everything, because the police themselves created the pretext for barging in. But the Supreme Court ruled last week that such a warrantless search does not necessarily violate the Fourth Amendment, according to a vague new standard for determining whether the police violated the protection against unreasonable search, or threatened to do so.
They sent the case back to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which is going to have a hard time understanding the new standard — and in any case never resolved whether any evidence was, in fact, destroyed.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lone dissenter in this strange decision, wisely warned that the new rule gave the police “a way routinely to dishonor” the constitutional requirement that they obtain a warrant, by manufacturing an exception to it. There are already exceptions for “exigent circumstances,” emergencies like an imminent risk of death or a danger evidence will be destroyed. But the urgency usually exists when the police arrive at the scene. In this case, the police caused the exigent circumstances themselves.
The new rule undermines the rule of law by shifting the power to approve a forced entry from a magistrate to the police. It empowers the police to decide whether circumstances allow them to kick in the door.
The majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito Jr. says that the “exigent circumstances” rule applies even though the police triggered the danger that evidence would be destroyed. Apartment-dwellers with nothing to hide, the justice said, are at fault if they don’t take advantage of their right to refuse entry when the police knock. (As if this would be realistic even in Justice Alito’s neighborhood.)
Justice Ginsburg asks, “How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?”
Her dissent is a reminder of the enduring value of privacy, as well as of her value to American law. It is unsettling that she is the only justice to insist that the law hold the line on its definition of exigent circumstances so that our “officers are under the law,” as Justice Robert Jackson once put it. But it is reassuring to have her stand up for the Fourth Amendment and to police power that is literally and constitutionally unwarranted.
-
This Court is too liberal, and the King decision proves that. It must be that there are liberal activist justices like Alito.
-
And abominable, counterproductive drug laws that produce the appearance of probable cause every time an herb is ignited.
-
"Refusing to answer the door is a grounds for kicking it in?"
That alone? NO. With the totality of the circumstances in the above case? YES.
-
"This Court is too liberal, and the King decision proves that. It must be that there are liberal activist justices like Alito. "
Don't forget those ultraliberals, Scalia and Thomas! :wink:
-
"And abominable, counterproductive drug laws that produce the appearance of probable cause every time an herb is ignited."
Don't forget all those horrific counter-terrorism efforts intended to prevent religious activists from using plutonium as an aspect of their belief system. Plutonium is NATURAL, and thus incapible of doing anything bad.
-
"Justice Kennedy's opinion included an array of anecdotes regarding prison conditions in California, where "as many as 54 prisoners may share a single toilet" "
- I don't have time to study a case now, but that sounds like the foundation of a solid argument ... to fund an additional toilet. How does a factual statement have the words "as many as"..."may" in it?
-
Somehow, I'm not worried about Iran getting its hands on a bunch of pot , , , Indeed, it might mellow them out a bit.
-
Don't forget all those horrific counter-terrorism efforts intended to prevent religious activists from using plutonium as an aspect of their belief system. Plutonium is NATURAL, and thus incapible of doing anything bad.
Apples, meet oranges. Or kumquats. Or something.
-
http://www.kgun9.com/story/14621212/marine-killed-by-swat-was-acting-in-defense-says-family?redirected=true&config=H264
:cry: :cry: :cry:
-
A lot of inferences and suppositions here, but I think they are on to something. My guess is that, among other things, domestic spooks are tracking terror suspects via cell phone locational data, noting what other cells are proximate to suspects as they go about their day, then looking for patterns within that locational data post facto. This leads to a couple scary conclusions: first, if you find yourself stopped at a light next to a suspect of some sort, your locational data likely now has someone's interest piqued. Say you work at a college with several active Muslim organizations on it; there is likely no way not to end up next to someone who's phone is being tracked.
Secondly, there is no way these sorts of associational searches are being run in real time. That strongly implies that all "business record" (see below) locational data for all cell phones are being obtained and archived somewhere, with the situational searches run after the fact. If true that means ever citizen owning something with locational tracking ability has all their movements stored somewhere by who knows who, with who knows what kind of shelf life, accessible for who knows what reason, to who knows what end. Oversight would appear negligible in the vacuum within which all this is occurring. A massive infringement on constitutional protections as I understand them, in other words, one sure to be answered to some day.
Atlas Bugged: Why the “Secret Law” of the Patriot Act Is Probably About Location Tracking
Posted by Julian Sanchez
Barack Obama’s AutoPen has signed another four-year extension of three Patriot Act powers, but one silver lining of this week’s lopsided battle over the law is that mainstream papers like The New York Times have finally started to take note of the growing number of senators who have raised an alarm over a “secret interpretation” of Patriot’s “business records” authority (aka Section 215). It would appear to be linked to a “sensitive collection program” referenced by a Justice Department official at hearings during the previous reauthorization debate—one that would be disrupted if 215 orders were restricted to the records of suspected terrorists, their associates, or their “activities” (e.g., large purchases of chemicals used to make bombs). Naturally, lots of people are starting to wonder just what this program, and the secret interpretation of the law that may be associated with it, are all about.
All we can do is speculate, of course: only a handful of legislators and people with top-secret clearances know for sure. But a few of us who closely monitor national security and surveillance issues have come to the same conclusion: it probably involves some form of cellular phone geolocation tracking, potentially on a large scale. The evidence for this is necessarily circumstantial, but I think it’s fairly persuasive when you add it all up.
First, a bit of background. The recent fiery floor speeches from Sens. Wyden and Udall are the first time widespread attention has been drawn to this issue—but it was actually first broached over a year ago, by Sen. Richard Durbin and then-Sen. Russ Feingold, as I point out in my new paper on Patriot surveillance. Back in 2005, language that would have required Section 215 business record orders to pertain to terror suspects, or their associates, or the “activities” of a terror group won the unanimous support of the Senate Judiciary Committee, though was not ultimately included in the final reauthorization bill. Four years later, however, the Justice Department was warning that such a requirement would interfere with that “sensitive collection program.” As Durbin complained at the time:
The real reason for resisting this obvious, common-sense modification of Section 215 is unfortunately cloaked in secrecy. Some day that cloak will be lifted, and future generations will ask whether our actions today meet the test of a democratic society: transparency, accountability, and fidelity to the rule of law and our Constitution.
Those are three pretty broad categories of information—and it should raise a few eyebrows to learn that the Justice Department believes it routinely needs to get information outside its scope for counterterror investigations. Currently, any record asserted to be “relevant” to an investigation (a standard so low it’s barely a standard) is subject to Section 215, and records falling within those three categories enjoy a “presumption of relevance.” That means the judges on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court lack discretion to evaluate for themselves whether such records are really relevant to an investigation; they must presume their relevance. With that in mind, consider that the most recent report to Congress on the use of these powers shows a record 96 uses of Section 215 in 2010, up from 22 the previous year. Perhaps most surprisingly though, the FISC saw fit to “modify” (which almost certainly means “narrow the scope of”) 42 of those orders. Since the court’s discretion is limited with respect to records of suspected terrorists and their associates, it seems probable that those “modifications” involved applications for orders that sweep more broadly. But why would such records be needed? Hold that thought.
Fast forward to this week. We hear Sen. Wyden warning that “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry,” a warning echoed by Sen. Udall. We know that this surprising and disturbing interpretation concerns one of the three provisions that had been slated for sunset. Lone Wolf remains unused, so that’s out, leaving roving wiretaps and Section 215. In the context of remarks by Sens. Feingold and Durbin, and the emphasis recently placed on concerns about Section 215 by Sen. Udall, the business records provision seems like a safe bet. By its explicit terms, that authority is already quite broad: What strained secret interpretation of it could be surprising to both legislators and the general public, but also meet with the approval of the FISC and the Office of Legal Counsel?
For one possible answer, look to the criminal context, where the Department of Justice has developed a novel legal theory, known as the “hybrid theory,” according to which law enforcement may do some types of geolocation tracking of suspects’ cellular phones without obtaining a full-blown probable cause warrant. The “hybrid theory” involves fusing two very different types of surveillance authority. “Pen registers” allow the monitoring, in real time, of the communications “metadata” from phones or other communications devices (phone numbers dialed, IP addresses connected to). For cellular phones, that “metadata” would often make it possible to pinpoint at least approximately—and, increasingly, with a good deal of precision, especially in urban areas—the location of the user. Federal law, however, prohibits carriers from disclosing location information “solely” pursuant to a pen register order. Another type of authority, known as a 2703(d) order, is a bit like Patriot’s business records authority (though only for telecommunications providers), and is used to compel the production of historical (as opposed to real-time/prospective) records, without any exclusion on location information. The Justice Department’s novel theory—which I discussed at a recent Cato event with Sen. Wyden on geolocation tracking—is that by bundling these two authorities in a new kind of combination order, they can do real-time geolocation tracking without the need to obtain a full Fourth Amendment warrant based on probable cause. Many courts have been skeptical of this theory and rejected it—but at least some have gone along with this clever bit of legal origami. Using the broad business records power of Patriot’s Section 215 in a similar way, to enable physical tracking of anyone with a cellphone, would seem to fit the bill, then: certainly surprising and counterintuitive, not what most people think of when we talk about “obtaining business records,” but nevertheless a maneuver with a legal track record of convincing some courts.
Now, consider that Sen. Wyden has also recently developed a concern with the practice of mobile location tracking, which has become so popular that the U.S. Marshall Service, now the federal government’s most prolific (known) user of pen register orders, of which it issued over 6,000 last year, employs the “hybrid theory” to obtain location information by default with each such order. Wyden has introduced legislation that would establish standards for mobile location tracking, which has two surprising and notable feature. First, while the location tracking known to the public all involves criminal investigations subject to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), that’s not where Wyden’s bill makes its primary modifications. Instead, the key amendments are made directly to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—which language is then incorporated by reference into ECPA. Second, even though one section establishes the “exclusive means” for geolocation tracking, the proposal goes out of its way to additionally modify the FISA pen register provision and the Section 215 business records provision to explicitly prohibit their use to obtain geolocation information—as though there is some special reason to worry about those provisions being used that way, requiring any possible ambiguity to be removed.
Sen. Udall, meanwhile, always uses the same two examples when he talks about his concerns regarding Section 215: he warns about “unfettered” government access to “business records ranging from a cell phone company’s phone records to an individual’s library history,” even when the records relate to people with no connection to terrorism. The reference to libraries is no surprise, because the specter of Section 215 being used to probe people’s reading habits was raised so insistently by librarians that it became common to see it referenced as the “library provision.” The other example is awfully specific though: he singles out cell phone records, even though many types of sensitive phone records can already be obtained without judicial oversight using National Security Letters. But he doesn’t just say “phone records”—it’s cell phone records he’s especially concerned about. And where he talks about “an individual’s” library records, he doesn’t warn about access to “an individual’s” cell phone records, but rather the company’s records. As in, the lot of them.
Tracking the location of suspected terrorists, and perhaps their known associates, might not seem so objectionable—though one could argue whether Section 215′s “relevance” standard was sufficient, or whether a full FISA electronic surveillance warrant (requiring a showing of probable cause) would be a more appropriate tool. But that kind of targeted tracking would not require broad access to records of people unconnected to terror suspects and their known associates, which is hinted at by both Sen. Udall’s remarks and the high rate of modifications imposed on Section 215 orders by the FISA court. Why might that be needed in the course of a geolocation tracking program?
For a possible answer, turn to the “LocInt” or “Location Intelligence” services marketed to U.S. law enforcement and national security clients by the firm TruePosition. Among the capabilities the company boasts for its software (drawn from both its site and a 2008 white paper the company sponsored) are:
● the ability to analyze location intelligence to detect suspicious behavioral patterns,
● the ability to mine historical mobile phone data to detect relationships between people, locations, and events,
● TruePosition LOCINT can mine location data to find out if the geoprofile of a prepaid phone matches the geoprofile of a potential threat and identify it as such, and
● leveraging location intelligence, officials can identify mobile phones of interest that frequently communicate with each other, or are within close proximity, making it easier to identify criminals and their associates. [Emphasis added.]
Certainly one can see how these functions might be useful: terrorists trained in counterintelligence tactics might seek to avoid surveillance, or identification of co-conspirators, by communicating only in person. Calling records would be useless for revealing physical meetings—but location records are another story. What these functions have in common, however, is that like any kind of data mining, they require access to a large pool of data, not just the records of a known suspect. You can find out who your suspect is phoning by looking at his phone records. But if you want to know who he’s in close physical proximity to—with unusual frequency, and most likely alone—you need to sift through everyone’s phone location records, or at any rate a whole lot of them. The interesting thing is, it’s not obvious there’s any legal way to actually do all that: full-fledged electronic surveillance warrants would be a non-starter, since they require probable cause for each target. But clearly the company expects to be able to sell these capabilities to some government entity. The obvious candidate is the FBI, availing itself of the broad authority of Section 215—perhaps in combination with FISA pen registers when the tracking needs to happen in real time.
As a final note of interest, the Office of the Inspector Generals’ reports on National Security Letter contain numerous oblique references to “community of interest [REDACTED]” requests. Traditional “community of interest” analysis means looking at the pattern of communications of not just the primary suspect of an investigation, but their whole social circle—the people the suspect communicates with, and perhaps the people they in turn communicate with, and so on. Apparently the fact that the FBI does this sort of traditional CoI analysis is not considered secret, because that phrase remains unredacted. What, then, could that single omitted word be? One candidate that would fit in the available space is “location” or “geolocation”—meaning either location tracking of people called by the suspect or perhaps the use of location records to build a suspect’s “community of interest” by “identify[ing] mobile phones…within close proximity” to the suspects. The Inspector General reports cover the first few years following passage of the Patriot Act, before an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel held that NSLs could not properly be used to obtain the full range of communications metadata the FBI had been getting under them. If NSLs had been used for location-tracking information prior to that 2008 opinion, it would likely have been necessary to rely on Section 215 past that point, which would fit the timeline.
Is all of that conclusive? Of course not; again, this is speculation. But a lot of data points fit, and it would be quite surprising if the geolocation capabilities increasingly being called upon for criminal investigations were not being used for intelligence purposes. If they are, Section 215 is the natural mechanism.
Even if I’m completely wrong, however, the larger point remains: while intelligence operations must remain secret, a free and democratic society is not supposed to be governed by secret laws—and substantive judicial interpretations are no less a part of “the law” than the text of statutes. Whatever power the government has arrogated to itself by an “innovative” interpretation of the Patriot Act, it should be up to a free citizenry to consider the case for it, determine whether it is so vital to security to justify the intrusion on privacy, and hold their representatives accountable accordingly. Instead, Congress has essential voted blind—reauthorizing powers that even legislators, let alone the public, do not truly understand. Whether it’s location tracking or something else, this is fundamentally incompatible with the preconditions of both democracy and a free society.
-
A lot of inferences and suppositions here, but I think they are on to something. My guess is that, among other things, domestic spooks are tracking terror suspects via cell phone locational data, noting what other cells are proximate to suspects as they go about their day, then looking for patterns within that locational data post facto. This leads to a couple scary conclusions: first, if you find yourself stopped at a light next to a suspect of some sort, your locational data likely now has someone's interest piqued. Say you work at a college with several active Muslim organizations on it; there is likely no way not to end up next to someone who's phone is being tracked.
Secondly, there is no way these sorts of associational searches are being run in real time. That strongly implies that all "business record" (see below) locational data for all cell phones are being obtained and archived somewhere, with the situational searches run after the fact. If true that means ever citizen owning something with locational tracking ability has all their movements stored somewhere by who knows who, with who knows what kind of shelf life, accessible for who knows what reason, to who knows what end. Oversight would appear negligible in the vacuum within which all this is occurring. A massive infringement on constitutional protections as I understand them, in other words, one sure to be answered to some day.
If these methods are being used for counterterrorism investigations, do you think it would make sense to have an organizational chart of suspects that sprawls into the millions? If you have identified a "person of interest", you'd be looking to connect him/her to others in a cell, which would involve specifically sorting out all the chaff of normal interactions in the day to day life of the suspect.
-
In Florida, Criminals Pose as Police More Frequently and for More Violent Ends
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
MIAMI — A black BMW flashing red and blue lights suddenly filled Alexandria Armeley’s rearview mirror one evening last month. At a stoplight, the BMW’s driver pulled up next to her, waved a gold badge and told her “I’m a cop.”
But Ms. Armeley was suspicious. Before she pulled over, she called her stepfather, Alex Hernandez, a police detective in Biscayne Park, Fla., who warned her that the man was probably not a police officer. Speed away, he told her.
A terrified Ms. Armeley took off and was chased by the BMW for several miles through southern Miami-Dade County. Detective Hernandez had jumped in his car to help and eventually caught up to them.
So the real officer arrested the fake officer, whose name is Daniel A. Barros. Asked why he had tried to pull over Ms. Armeley, a 23-year-old college student, Mr. Barros, 22, told officers, “She was speeding.”
The BMW 7 Series car, outfitted with police lights and a siren, was “lit up like a Christmas tree,” Detective Hernandez recalled about the midnight encounter. “There are a lot of guys walking around with phony badges, but this guy had the whole works. Who knows what he would have done if he had gotten my stepdaughter to stop?”
Mr. Barros is facing several charges in the case, including impersonating an officer.
As long as police officers have worn uniforms and carried badges, criminals have dressed like them to try to win the trust of potential victims. Now the impersonators are far more sophisticated, according to nearly a dozen city police chiefs and detectives across the country.
In South Florida, seemingly an incubator of law-breaking innovation, police impersonators have become better organized and, most troubling to law enforcement officials, more violent. The practice is so common that the Miami-Dade Police Department has a Police Impersonator Unit.
Since the unit was established in 2007, it has arrested or had encounters with more than 80 phony officers in Miami-Dade County, and the frequency has increased in recent months, said Lt. Daniel Villanueva, who heads the unit.
“It’s definitely a trend,” Lieutenant Villanueva said. “They use the guise of being a police officer to knock on a door, and the victim lowers their guard for just a second. At that point, it’s too late.”
He added that part of the problem was that it was easy for civilians to buy “police products,” like fake badges, handcuffs and uniforms. “The states need to lock this down and make impersonating a police officer a more serious crime because we’re seeing more people using these types of these things to commit more serious crimes,” he said.
Detective Javier J. Baez of the Miami-Dade Police Department said, “These types of crimes here in Miami typically have a nexus to drugs.”
Increasingly, fake police officers are pulling off crimes together, the authorities say.
One evening three weeks ago, three men in police uniforms knocked on the door of a home in southwest Miami-Dade County.
When the home’s owner, Jose Montoya, opened the door, the men barged in and yelled, “Police, police! Get down, get down!” The men tied up Mr. Montoya, his wife and their toddler and then spent hours ransacking the house, the authorities said. They beat up Mr. Montoya, who was treated at a nearby hospital, and stole cash, jewelry and several weapons, the police said.
Before leaving, the robbers warned Mr. Montoya and his family not to call the police, the authorities said, or they would return and kill them.
Some police impersonators commit violent crimes like home invasions, car-jackings, rapes and, rarely, murders.
Last summer, a Tampa man impersonating an undercover officer used a badge and a siren to pull over a 28-year-old woman and rape her. In January, the man, Luis Harris, 31, was convicted of sexual battery, grand theft, kidnapping and impersonating a police officer, among other charges. A judge sentenced Mr. Harris to life in prison
==============
Page 2 of 2)
Other police impersonators, police chiefs and detectives say, masquerade as officers for more benign reasons, like trying to scare or impress someone. “Usually,” Detective Baez said, “the wannabe cop outfits their vehicles with police lights and fake insignias to fulfill some psychological need.”
This happened in Chicago when a 14-year-old boy named Vincent Richardson donned police garb and walked into the Third District precinct during morning roll call in January 2009. Officers handed him a radio and told him to ride along with a female officer. The teenager even helped make an arrest.
“After four or five hours, she asks, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” recalled Jody P. Weis, who was the Chicago police superintendent at the time. “He’s in a uniform, he has a goofy badge, he doesn’t have a weapon and he’s a high school kid. It was so embarrassing.” (The embarrassment did not end there for Mr. Weis, who said he had recommended against punishing the teenager in juvenile court because no harm had been done. Three months later, the boy was arrested and charged with stealing a car. Last week, he was arrested on several weapons charges.)
Impersonating an officer is a misdemeanor in some states, though it is a felony in Florida. The charge’s severity, and punishment, increases if a criminal charged with posing as a police officer commits a felony. Several chiefs and detectives say the crime is not taken seriously enough by the justice system and the public. Often, the crime goes unreported, the police say.
“Unfortunately, there is not a lot of downside for a criminal to impersonate a police officer,” said Commissioner Edward Davis of the Boston Police Department. “You can charge them with impersonating a police officer, but that’s not a very serious crime. The way the law views this crime, it’s as an innocent or silly prank. But it has become a much more serious crime than it is perceived by the public.”
Detective Hernandez, of Biscayne Park, Fla., said: “People minimize it. They just let it go. They won’t think about how dangerous this potentially can be. They just don’t see it.”
Some law enforcement officials said the public did not take these types of episodes seriously because of the types of cases often highlighted by the news media. People charged with impersonating police officers are often portrayed as befuddled, hapless and harmless.
In March, a motocross champion was arrested in Orlando, Fla., and charged with impersonating a police officer. The man, James Stewart Jr., 25, tried to stop another car using red and blue lights, the Florida Highway Patrol said. The car that he tried to stop contained two off-duty troopers.
Last October in Boca Raton, Fla., Andrew Novotak, in his white Crown Victoria with flashing green lights, pulled over motorists and quizzed them about whether they had been drinking alcohol, the police said.
When the police questioned him, Mr. Novotak was wearing a police badge and carrying a loaded gun. He also had a German shepherd in his back seat, which he insisted was a police-trained dog. After arresting him, officers said they smelled alcohol on his breath. He was charged with impersonating an officer and driving under the influence.
-
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2011/05/16/
-
Haven't read this yet, but it seems likely to be quite relevant to our discussion here:
1. Supreme Court decides Kentucky v. King -- warrantless entry case.
AELE, joined by the IACP and NSA, urged the Court to adopt an objective reasonableness standard for warrantless entries into premises predicated on exigent circumstances. The brief stressed that officers need clear guidance and a uniform rule for training and operational purposes -- and for their safety when confronting dangerous offenders. Read the AELE brief at http://www.aele.org/ky-king.pdf
The Court, in an 8-1 holding, overturned the Kentucky Supreme Court. See http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-1272.pdf
Note: This case is a huge win for police officers.
-
If these methods are being used for counterterrorism investigations, do you think it would make sense to have an organizational chart of suspects that sprawls into the millions? If you have identified a "person of interest", you'd be looking to connect him/her to others in a cell, which would involve specifically sorting out all the chaff of normal interactions in the day to day life of the suspect.
Sure, which would by necessity require whomever to have recorded the locational data of every trackable device for a number of years as the only way to correlate that stuff would be to have all available location data stored somewhere. Once you find an association you wouldn't only want to project it forward, but mine it backwards too, yes? Guess we know what the NSA needs all those yottabytes of storage for. It'll be interesting to see what happens when American citizens discover that they all are being tracked all the time.
-
If these methods are being used for counterterrorism investigations, do you think it would make sense to have an organizational chart of suspects that sprawls into the millions? If you have identified a "person of interest", you'd be looking to connect him/her to others in a cell, which would involve specifically sorting out all the chaff of normal interactions in the day to day life of the suspect.
Sure, which would by necessity require whomever to have recorded the locational data of every trackable device for a number of years as the only way to correlate that stuff would be to have all available location data stored somewhere. Once you find an association you wouldn't only want to project it forward, but mine it backwards too, yes? Guess we know what the NSA needs all those yottabytes of storage for. It'll be interesting to see what happens when American citizens discover that they all are being tracked all the time.
Imaginitive but very unlikely. The costs involved would be massive and the usefullness very limited. Cell phone location data isn't very exact. Pinging someone from a cell tower can give you a general location in a given area of a cell phone in relation to a cell tower, but it's very difficult to run down an exact address under most circumstances.
-
And so all those yottabytes or storage are for. . . ? And the two pieces I've posted that are starting to unravel this mystery should be dismissed for what reason?
Just so you can get an idea of the scale of the storage that I guess is being used to catalog chicken salad sandwich recipes or something:
How Big is a Yottabyte? [Infographic]
By Alex Williams / May 17, 2011 9:30 AM / 0 Comments
Hacker News Share & Save
This post is part of our ReadWriteWeb Solution Series, which explores specific technologies and industries that use virtualization for critical operations. We hope this expert analysis and discussion will inspire you in use new ways to use virtualization technology within your organization. This post is sponsored by VMware & IBM. For more, see: IBM Tivoli Manager: Overcoming the Challenges of Backing Up and Restoring Virtual Machines
This year it's become clear that data is scaling to such an degree that you have to change how you manage your desktop and your entire information architecture in order to not just manage your daily work but to succeed.
It's the core issue of our day, one that's that's a top priority when planning to adopt a virtualized infrastructure that allows for people to access apps from tablets and smartphones.
The first step is to get a perspective on the size of the data. This infographic shows what a yottabyte represents in comparison to other terms for units of measurement. It may seem far out to think in such terms but considering projected storage requirements, the concept doesn't seem so far fetched.
(http://rww.readwriteweb.netdna-cdn.com/solution-series/assets_c/2011/05/infographicyottabyte_thumb1-thumb-560x1085-29962.jpg)
As I'm sure you know, when evaluating an opponent you have to assess his capabilities rather than his intentions. The capabilities of US intelligence collection agencies is truly jaw dropping; you think we should dismiss those capabilities as we attempt to provide oversight for them?
-
And so all those yottabytes or storage are for. . . ? And the two pieces I've posted that are starting to unravel this mystery should be dismissed for what reason?
Just so you can get an idea of the scale of the storage that I guess is being used to catalog chicken salad sandwich recipes or something:
As I'm sure you know, when evaluating an opponent you have to assess his capabilities rather than his intentions. The capabilities of US intelligence collection agencies is truly jaw dropping; you think we should dismiss those capabilities as we attempt to provide oversight for them?
As more and more people on the planet use some type of communication technology, the NSA needs a place to put everything it hoovers up.
-
Yup. Unconstitutionally, but my bet is it is vacuuming it all up nonetheless and likely using the rationale that they only look at the archived files if they have good reason to so American citizens should not be concerned if there every phone call, every identifiable location, every internet activity, every purchase, and so on is being collected, collated, and cross referenced by organs of the federal government.
George Orwell, Big Brother is holding your calls.
-
Yup. Unconstitutionally, but my bet is it is vacuuming it all up nonetheless and likely using the rationale that they only look at the archived files if they have good reason to so American citizens should not be concerned if there every phone call, every identifiable location, every internet activity, every purchase, and so on is being collected, collated, and cross referenced by organs of the federal government.
George Orwell, Big Brother is holding your calls.
Oh brother. Does everyone on the planet enjoy constitutional protections?
-
Uh , , , no. Duh. The concern here IS American citizens.
-
Uh , , , no. Duh. The concern here IS American citizens.
Then why the hysteria that the NSA is listening in on foreign phone calls/texts/emails? That's their job.
-
Is that what we have been discussing? I seem to have missed that , , ,
-
No, we're discussing the theoretical horrors of what if the gov't knew where your cell was at all times. :roll:
-
So why the nonsense about non-Americans having Constitutional rights?
-
"As more and more people on the planet use some type of communication technology, the NSA needs a place to put everything it hoovers up."
"Yup. Unconstitutionally, but my bet is it is vacuuming it all up nonetheless and likely using the rationale that they only look at the archived files if they have good reason to so American citizens should not be concerned if there every phone call, every identifiable location, every internet activity, every purchase, and so on is being collected, collated, and cross referenced by organs of the federal government."
-
C'mon GM, you are too bright for this. Our concern has been expressed in terms of American Constitutional rights. Posting as if we are trying to extend American C'l rights to the whole planet is , , , tedious.
-
I pointed out the NSA global role. BBG spun into a constitutional complaint. Our intel agencies work on SIGINT and other forms of intel gathering outside the US.
-
But our complaint concerns tracking us here in the US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-
Who is tracking you here in the US?
-
BBG as quoted by you on May 28:
lot of inferences and suppositions here, but I think they are on to something. My guess is that, among other things, domestic spooks are tracking terror suspects via cell phone locational data, noting what other cells are proximate to suspects as they go about their day, then looking for patterns within that locational data post facto. This leads to a couple scary conclusions: first, if you find yourself stopped at a light next to a suspect of some sort, your locational data likely now has someone's interest piqued. Say you work at a college with several active Muslim organizations on it; there is likely no way not to end up next to someone who's phone is being tracked.
Secondly, there is no way these sorts of associational searches are being run in real time. That strongly implies that all "business record" (see below) locational data for all cell phones are being obtained and archived somewhere, with the situational searches run after the fact. If true that means ever citizen owning something with locational tracking ability has all their movements stored somewhere by who knows who, with who knows what kind of shelf life, accessible for who knows what reason, to who knows what end. Oversight would appear negligible in the vacuum within which all this is occurring. A massive infringement on constitutional protections as I understand them, in other words, one sure to be answered to some day.
-
Yes, and as I pointed out, his theory on the needed yottabites of storage for everyone's (domestic) cell phone locational data doesn't hold up. It would be immensely expensive and not very useful.
-
That can be debated, but the point remains that your commentary about extending American C'l rights to outside the US was non-responsive.
-
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/06/swat-team-busts-into-house-over-student-loan-default/
-
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/06/swat-team-busts-into-house-over-student-loan-default/
UPDATE: The Department of Education emailed Raw Story with a comment from spokesman Justin Hamilton to say the search warrant and raid were related to a criminal investigation, not a student loan default. The ABC affiliate has yanked its story that made the now seemingly false claim.
“While it was reported in local media that the search was related to a defaulted student loan, that is incorrect. This is related to a criminal investigation. The Inspector General’s Office does not execute search warrants for late loan payments,” Hamilton said. “Because this is an ongoing criminal investigation, we can’t comment on the specifics of the case.”
-
Well, that is good news. Thanks GM.
-
I would hate to see search warrants being served over a simple failure to pay. That would not make sense.
-
Thank you for the correction to the false original report. I am relieved to hear it.
-
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2011/06/12/nr.holmes.armstrong.facebook.cnn?hpt=hp_t2
-
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-cellphone-20110614,0,336967.story
-
FBI’s New Guidelines Further Loosen Constraints on Monitoring
Posted by Julian Sanchez
The New York Times‘s Charlie Savage reports that the FBI is preparing to release a new Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG), further relaxing the rules governing the Bureau’s investigation of Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing.
This comes just three years after the last major revision of FBI manual, which empowered agents to employ a broad range of investigative techniques in exploratory “assessments” of citizens or domestic groups, even in the absence of allegations or evidence of wrongdoing, which are needed to open an “investigation.” The FBI assured Congress that it would conduct intensive training, and test agents to ensure that they understood the limits of the new authority—but the Inspector General found irregularities suggestive of widespread cheating on those tests.
Agents can already do quite a bit even without opening an “assessment”: They can consult the government’s own massive (and ever-growing) databases, or search the public Internet for “open source” intelligence. If, however, they want to start digging through state and local law enforcement records, or plumb the vast quantities of information held by commercial data aggregators like LexisNexis or Acxiom, they currently do have to open an assessment. Again, that doesn’t mean they’ve got to have evidence—or even an allegation—that their target is doing anything illegal, but it does mean they’ve got to create a paper trail and identify a legitimate purpose for their inquiries. That’s not much of a limitation, to be sure, but it does provide a strong deterrent to casual misuse of those databases for personal reasons. That paper trail means an agent who might be tempted to use government resources for personal ends—to check up on an ex or a new neighbor—has good reason to think twice.
Removing that check means there will be a lot more digging around in databases without any formal record of why. Even though most of those searches will be legitimate, that makes the abuses more likely to get lost in the crowd. Indeed, a series of reports by the Inspector General’s Office finding “widespread and serious misuse” of National Security Letters, noted that lax recordkeeping made it extremely difficult to accurately gauge the seriousness of the abuses or their true extent—and, of course, to hold the responsible parties accountable. Moreover, the most recent of those reports strongly suggests that agents engaged in illegal use of so-called “exigent letters” resisted the introduction of new records systems precisely because they knew (or at least suspected) their methods weren’t quite kosher.
The new rules will also permit agents to rifle through a person’s garbage when conducting an “assessment” of someone they’d like to recruit as an informant or mole. The reason, according to the Times, is that “they want the ability to use information found in a subject’s trash to put pressure on that person to assist the government in the investigation of others.” Not keen into being dragooned into FBI service? Hope you don’t have anything embarrassing in your dumpster! Physical surveillance squads can only be assigned to a target once, for a limited time, in the course of an assessment under the current rules—that limit, too, falls by the wayside in the revised DIOG.
The Bureau characterizes the latest round of changes as “tweaks” to the most recent revisions. That probably understates the significance of some of the changes, but one reason it’s worrying to see another bundle of revisions so soon after the last overhaul is precisely that it’s awfully easy to slip a big aggregate change under the radar by breaking it up into a series of “tweaks.”
We’ve seen such a move already with respect to National Security Letters, which enable access to a wide array of sensitive financial, phone, and Internet records without a court order—as long as the information is deemed relevant to an “authorized investigation.” When Congress massively expanded the scope of these tools under the USA Patriot Act, legislators understood that to mean full investigations, which must be based on “specific facts” suggesting that a crime is being committed or that a threat to national security exists. Just two years later, the Attorney General’s guidelines were quietly changed to permit the use of NSLs during “preliminary” investigations, which need not meet that standard. Soon, more than half of the NSLs issued each year were used for such preliminary inquiries (though they aren’t available for mere “assessments”… yet).
The FBI, of course, prefers to emphasize all the restrictions that remain in place. We’ll probably have to wait a year or two to see which of those get “tweaked” away next.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/fbi’s-new-guidelines-further-loosen-constraints-on-monitoring/
-
Oh no, the FBI can use investigative techniques to investigate! :roll:
-
In the absence of allegations, better yet. What could go wrong with that?
-
I dunno, maybe we could go back to the good old days.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11923151/ns/us_news-security/t/agent-who-arrested-moussaoui-blasts-fbi/
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 accused headquarters of criminal negligence for its refusal to investigate Moussaoui aggressively after his arrest, according to court testimony Monday.
Agent Harry Samit testified under cross-examination at Moussaoui’s trial that FBI headquarters’ refusal to follow up “prevented a serious opportunity to stop the 9/11 attacks” that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Moussaoui is the only person charged in this country in the attacks.
The FBI’s actions between Moussaoui’s arrest on immigration violations on Aug. 16, 2001, and Sept. 11, 2001, are crucial to his trial because prosecutors allege that Moussaoui’s lies prevented the FBI from thwarting or at least minimizing the Sept. 11 attacks. Prosecutors must prove that Moussaoui’s actions caused the death of at least one person on 9/11 to obtain a death penalty.
The defense argues that nothing Moussaoui said after his arrest would have made any difference to the FBI because its bureaucratic intransigence rendered it incapable of reacting swiftly to Moussaoui’s arrest under any circumstances.
Memo predicted aircraft hijacking
Under cross-examination by defense attorney Edward MacMahon, Samit acknowledged that he predicted in an Aug. 18, 2001, memo that Moussaoui was a radical Islamic terrorist in a criminal conspiracy to hijack aircraft. Moussaoui ended up pleading guilty to two specific counts that Samit had explicitly predicted in his Aug. 18 memo.
Despite Samit’s urgent pleadings, FBI headquarters refused to open a criminal investigation and refused Samit’s entreaties to obtain a search warrant.
“You needed people in Washington to help you out?” MacMahon asked.
“Yes,” Samit said.
“They didn’t do that, did they?”
Samit said no.
He confirmed under questioning that he had attributed FBI inaction to “obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism” in an earlier report.
One FBI supervisor in Washington told Samit that he was getting unnecessarily “spun up” about his concerns over Moussaoui.
Death or life in prison to be determined
Moussaoui pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al-Qaida to hijack aircraft and commit other crimes. The sentencing trial will determine his punishment: death or life in prison.
Moussaoui denies he had anything to do with 9/11 and says he was training for a future attack.
MacMahon also questioned Samit on whether the government could have legally searched Moussaoui’s Minnesota hotel room without first obtaining a warrant.
Samit said that in certain circumstances agents can conduct a search on foreign nationals immediately and obtain a warrant after the fact. But he said in Moussaoui’s case, he and his supervisors determined that it would be best to arrest Moussaoui first.
Samit testified before the trial’s recess last week that Moussaoui lied to him after his arrest and thwarted his ability to obtain a search warrant. Samit said that the FBI would have launched an all-out investigation if it had been able to search Moussaoui’s belongings.
“You blew an opportunity to search ... without arresting him?” MacMahon asked Samit.
Samit responded, “That’s totally false.”
He said he found himself in a bureaucratic bind because he had opened an intelligence investigation on Moussaoui rather than a criminal investigation and therefore needed Justice Department approval to get a search warrant. Many of the barriers between criminal and intelligence investigations were removed after 9/11.
-
Well the only thing absent there is the absence of allegations, so your point is?
Guess you missed this sentence, too:
The defense argues that nothing Moussaoui said after his arrest would have made any difference to the FBI because its bureaucratic intransigence rendered it incapable of reacting swiftly to Moussaoui’s arrest under any circumstances.
Just how would the ability to investigate anyone at any time without a prerequisite act combat the rank buffoonery quoted above?
-
I didn't miss the sentence. The FBI bureaucracy uses the FBI guidelines to impede the investigations of the "brick agents" that do the actual work. The guidelines do not change any legal restrictions the FBI operates under, just internal policy and procedure.
-
So, in hindsight, would it have been better to have Special Agent Samit working under tighter or looser guidelines? On the plus side, none of the 9/11 hijackers had their civil rights violated by Big Brother......
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/03/21/1142703358754.html
Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman, declined to comment on the evidence from Mr Samit, who remains an agent in the FBI's Minneapolis office.
Michael Maltbie, the primary supervisor Mr Samit accused of impeding his investigation, said on Monday that the issues raised in court "have been looked at extensively by Congress, the Justice Department, my own people".
"The [FBI] director has given me a chance to respond to some of these issues that have come up," said Mr Maltbie, a former counterterrorism supervisor at headquarters in Washington and now a supervisory special agent in Cleveland, Ohio.
Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty last April to conspiring with al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks. He was sitting in jail on that day following his arrest a month earlier after his activities raised suspicion at a Minnesota flight school.
On Monday, as jurors watched images of FBI documents flashing on television screens, a defence lawyer, Edward MacMahon, walked Mr Samit through a recital of government mistakes, prefacing nearly every question with: "You wanted people in Washington to know that … right?"
Moussaoui had raised Mr Samit's suspicions because he was training on a 747 simulator with limited flying experience and could not explain his foreign sources of income.
By August 2001 Mr Samit was telling FBI headquarters that he believed Moussaoui intended to hijack a plane "for the purpose of seizing control of the aircraft".
Mr Samit said he kept trying to persuade his bosses to authorise the surveillance warrant or a criminal search warrant until the day before the attacks.
-
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/06/16/supreme-court-expands-juveniles-miranda-rights/
-
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/06/16/supreme-court-expands-juveniles-miranda-rights/
I actually agree with the court in this ruling. A juvie in the scenario would probably not feel free to refuse to answer questions and leave.
-
Good for you GM.
-
Good thing I was sitting down as I read that or the shock might have been too much for me :lol: :-D
-
Bust my chops all you will. :-D
If you'll look a bit deeper you'll find my opinions on search and seizure and other related constitutional issues are well within the mainstream of legal thought. I like to look at prior prescidentprecedentpresi....case law when contemplating legal questions. I have interviewed criminal suspects without Mirandizing them, however I made it clear from the outset that it was totally voluntary and set up the office seating so the person being interviewed had direct, unimpeded access to an exit door.
-
I didn't miss the sentence. The FBI bureaucracy uses the FBI guidelines to impede the investigations of the "brick agents" that do the actual work. The guidelines do not change any legal restrictions the FBI operates under, just internal policy and procedure.
I see, and so your response to poor job performance is less accountability. Seems we attended different schools of employee management. Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding; is your argument that the FBI's management is so lacking that brick and mortar agents should be left essentially unsupervised? Either way it would seem there's a big problem, one that had better be addressed rather than ignored.
-
The biggest problem in law enforcement, more often than not is the lack of quality leadership. The system tends to reward bureaucracy and risk aversion and lose sight of what the agency is supposed to be doing, like enforcing the law. If you have a remedy, I'd like to hear it.
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/2002_3552355/fbi-whistle-blower-assails-bureaucracy-agency-risk.html
WASHINGTON - The FBI agent whose impassioned protest letter ignited a storm of criticism of the bureau's management told a Senate committee on Thursday that the FBI's bureaucracy discouraged innovation, drowned investigators in paperwork and punished agents who sought to cut through the many layers of gatekeepers at FBI headquarters.
The agent, Coleen Rowley, a lawyer in the bureau's Minneapolis office, gave the Senate Judiciary Committee a rare glimpse into life in the FBI's field offices, where most of the investigative work is done, but where, she said, agents operate under the thumb of risk-averse superiors in Washington.
"There's a certain pecking order and it's real strong," Rowley said, referring to how agents were effectively barred from raising issues over the heads of their immediate supervisors. Even then, she said, numerous layers of officials at headquarters reviewed the decisions of agents in the field. "Seven to nine levels is really ridiculous," she said.
In a letter, sent on May 21 to the FBI director Robert Mueller, Rowley bitterly criticized the performance of FBI headquarters agents in handling the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker. She complained that headquarters agents stifled attempts by Minneapolis agents to obtain a warrant to examine Moussaoui's laptop computer. Moussaoui's computer was not searched until after the attacks.
-
The biggest problem in law enforcement, more often than not is the lack of quality leadership. The system tends to reward bureaucracy and risk aversion and lose sight of what the agency is supposed to be doing, like enforcing the law. If you have a remedy, I'd like to hear it.
Not my area of expertise so I do not have a remedy beyond not handing the foxes the keys to the chicken coops.
-
Again, any arrest/prosecution ends up in front of a judge and jury who vet the investigative work done. In addition, the FBI has an OPR and the DOJ has an IG.
-
And hence we should not be concerned when an investigator mucks around in someone's life when there was no identifiable prerequisite act or probable cause because it does not end up in front of a judge? Somehow I suspect the founders would disagree. I'd feel better if all investigations did end up in front of a judge as that would establish a feedback loop that might dissuade inappropriate or unnecessary investigations. As I read these new rules, a lot of trees could fall in a lot of forests absolutely unheard.
-
Mucks around how exactly? What exactly are you concerned about ?
-
Uh, the concerns raised by the piece that started this latest circular dance, the one with the lede reading:
The New York Times‘s Charlie Savage reports that the FBI is preparing to release a new Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG), further relaxing the rules governing the Bureau’s investigation of Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing.
Emphasis added.
-
Uh, the concerns raised by the piece that started this latest circular dance, the one with the lede reading:
The New York Times‘s Charlie Savage reports that the FBI is preparing to release a new Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG), further relaxing the rules governing the Bureau’s investigation of Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing.
Emphasis added.
Well, you know if it's in the New York Times, it's the unvarnished truth! They'd never spin things.....
-
Blind Terror, Dumb State by Deepak Lal
from Cato Recent Op-eds
Earlier this month coming back to Delhi after a month long trip to Argentina, my wife, who is a US citizen and has had ten-year multi-entry visas for India ever since we married nearly 40 years ago, was not allowed to board the flight from Heathrow as she was returning less than two months since her departure from Delhi, in early April. Despite my loud protests that there was no such restriction on her visa, she had to return to London, and after some pulling strings got a stamp on her passport to re-enter India signed by the Indian High commissioner. This 'new' visa policy, is of course the government's response to the David Headley affair and, as with so many responses in the 'war on terror', it is fighting the last war. The draconian screening of airline passengers did not prevent a Nigerian student from concealing a bomb in his underpants across airline scanners in three airports as late as December 2009. So, now airline passengers have to virtually strip to board a plane. What are the costs and benefits of these growing restrictions on personal liberty and increase in state power?
When the 'war on terror' was launched in 2001, John Mueller (now at Ohio State University) and I wrote papers on this issue for a book edited by Richard Rosecrance and Arthur Stein (No More States, Rowman and Littlefield, 2006). The direct costs to the US economy were miniscule ($100 billion — less than 0.8 per cent of its GDP).The most serious costs were the increase in the uncertainty associated with doing business, and from preventive measures taken as an overreaction to the terrorist threat. Thus, apart from the direct costs of homeland security, there are the costs imposed on travellers in terms of the opportunity costs of the time lost in security searches at airports. These were estimated in 2002 to be $16 and $32 billion annually for the US. A more recent estimate by Mueller and Mark Stewart (at Newcastle University in Australia) of these indirect costs to US travellers between 2002 and 2011 was $417 billion. Wilst the direct costs of extra homeland security was $690 billion. This expenditure would only have been cost effective, they estimate, if it had prevented or deterred four attacks every day like the one foiled in Times Square in New York.
Neither are the personal risks that citizens face from terrorism serious. Since 1960 till 2001, based on the US State department data, Mueller estimated that the number of Americans killed by international terrorism (including 9/11) is about the same as the number killed over the same period by lightning, or by accidental deer, or by severe allergic reaction to peanuts. While, including both domestic and international terrorism, "far fewer people were killed by terrorists in the entire world over the [20th century] than died in any number of unnoticed civil wars during the century" (pg 48).
What about the fears of future terrorist attacks using stolen chemical, biological and nuclear weapons? Of these, for various reasons, the danger of a 'dirty bomb' using stolen fissile materials is the most pertinent. Biological and chemical weapons are not easy to use by private agents. The damage from a 'dirty bomb' would be localised to the real estate in the area which was made radioactive. The personal danger from the likely 25 per cent increase in radiation over background radiation in the area is miniscule. "A common recommendation from nuclear scientists and engineers" notes Mueller, "is that those exposed should calmly walk away" (pg 62).
The costs of actual and potential terrorism have thus been considerably overblown. Worse, the 'war on terror' by inducing the unjustified panic which the terrorists seek to create, foster their aim of creating terror. Worse, by extending State powers and emasculating civil liberties they promote the very illiberal societies and 'police' states the jehadis themselves seek. A 'terror industry' develops with the same rent-seeking purposes as so many other state-sponsored attempts to create 'risk free' societies. Terrorism will always be with us. But, as for instance, given the known risks from driving, which causes over 40,000 deaths every year in automobile accidents in the US, Americans have not stopped driving. But, with the hysteria and panic created by the much smaller number of deaths from terrorism, they (and increasingly many across the world in liberal democracies) are willing to devote scarce resources to chasing horrendous phantoms. They would do better to remember the words of an earlier President." The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
How should the terrorist threat be dealt with? For many years I lived in London during the IRA's terrorist operations. The IRA not only succeeded in nearly killing Margret Thatcher and most of her cabinet in the Brighton bombing, but successfully launched a missile into John Major's cabinet room during a meeting. But during these Irish troubles, the British continued to follow the advice in an official Second World poster (to be issued in case of a German invasion): KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. They dealt with the IRA terrorists by hunting them down through the usual intelligence methods and incarcerating or killing them. Meanwhile, the economic chaos and insecurity the IRA caused in its 'homeland' — Northern Ireland — plus the growing realisation of the failure of terrorism to achieve its aims, led to the political settlement contained in the Good Friday agreement.
In dealing with the undeniable state-sponsored Pakistani terrorism in India, a similar policy is relevant. The only long-term solution is to change the Pakistan army's calculus that it can succeed in destroying India (or its economy) through its jihadi agents. As this tiger it has unleashed, increasingly turns( as it has) against its sponsors, and the growing distance between its citizens in a stagnant and those in the booming Indian economy becomes apparent to its people (as is happening), the 'rent seeking' soldiers might at last realise that it is in their interests to complete the deal, which Musharaff nearly completed with Dr Manmohan Singh. Meanwhile, intelligence remains vital in apprehending and forestalling ISI-sponsored terrorists. But this is not done through heavy handed suppression of civil liberties. When,with information from Western intelligence agencies, about the co-ordinates of suspicious boats moving to Bombay, along with mobile numbers of some terrorists, Indian intelligence failed to forestall the 26/11 attacks, it is absurd to believe that they can forestall future terrorist plots by preventing my 70-year-old American wife from coming back to India, a month after she had left our New Delhi home
Deepak Lal is the professor of international development studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13215
-
"So, now airline passengers have to virtually strip to board a plane. What are the costs and benefits of these growing restrictions on personal liberty and increase in state power?"
How many 9/11's would be needed to destroy the global aviation infrastructure? Let's work out the cost/benefit analysis of successful catastrophic terror attacks on a regular basis.
-
So this is a benefit cost analysis free zone? As pointed out before, TSA's airport employee regimens are abysmal; why do we have to wait for a vulnerability to be exploited before it's addressed, and why do we fling tens of billions of dollars against threats unlikely to materialize as the next 9/11 style hijacking will generate an in-flight passenger response? Are you advocating against adaptability and for rigid structures that fail to address concrete threats?
-
TSA Now Storming Public Places 8,000 Times a Year
By Tara Servatius
Americans must decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags. And they better decide quickly.
Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow.
A news report by ABC Action News in Tampa showed passengers being given the signature pat downs Americans are used to watching the Transportation Security Administration screeners perform at our airports. Canine teams sniffed their bags and the buses they rode. Immigration officials hunted for large sums of cash as part of an anti-smuggling initiative.
The TSA clearly intends for these out-of-nowhere swarms by its officers at community transit centers, bus stops and public events to become a routine and accepted part of American life.
The TSA has conducted 8,000 of these security sweeps across the country in the past year alone, TSA chief John Pistole told a Senate committee June 14. They are part of its VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) program, which targets public transit related places.
All of which is enough to make you wonder if we are watching the formation of the "civilian national security force" President Obama called for on the campaign trail "that is just as powerful, just as strong and just as well funded" as the military.
The VIPR swarm on Wednesday, the TSA's largest so far, was such a shocking display of the agency's power that it set the blogosphere abuzz.
In a massive flex of muscle most people didn't know the TSA had, the agency led dozens of federal and state law enforcement agencies in a VIPR exercise that covered three states and 5,000 square miles. According to the Marietta Times, the sweep used reconnaissance aircraft and "multiple airborne assets, including Blackhawk helicopters and fixed wing aircraft as well as waterborne and surface teams."
When did the TSA get this powerful? Last year, Pistole told USA Today he wanted to "take the TSA to the next level," building it into a "national-security, counterterrorism organization, fully integrated into U.S. government efforts."
What few people realize is how far Pistole has already come in his quest. This is apparently what that next level looks like. More than 300 law enforcement and military personnel swept through a 100-mile stretch of the Ohio Valley alone, examining the area's industrial infrastructure, the Charleston Gazette reported.
Federal air marshals, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard, the FBI, the Office of Homeland Security and two dozen other federal, state and local agencies teamed up to scour the state's roads, bridges, water supply and transit centers under the TSA's leadership.
What is remarkable about these security swarms is that they don't just involve federal, state and local law enforcement officials. The TSA brings in squads of bureaucrats from state and federal agencies as well, everything from transportation departments to departments of natural resources.
The TSA had received no specific threats about the Tampa bus station before the April sweep, reporters were told.
They were there "to sort of invent the wheel in advance in case we have to if there ever is specific intelligence requiring us to be here," said Gary Milano with the Department of Homeland Security in an ABC News Action television report. "This way us and our partners are ready to move in at a moment's notice."
Federal immigration officials from Customs and Border Patrol swept the station with the TSA, looking for "immigration violations, threats to national security" and "bulk cash smuggling." (How the bulk cash smuggling investigation related to national security was never explained.)
"We'll be back," Milano told reporters. "We won't say when we'll be back. This way the bad guys are on notice we'll be back."
The TSA gave the same vague answers when asked about the three-state sweep this week. That sweep wasn't in response to any specific security threat, either.
The purpose was to "have a visible presence and let people know we're out here," Michael Cleveland, federal security director for TSA operations in West Virginia told the Gazette. "It can be a deterrent."
It might be -- if Americans are willing to live this way.
Tara Servatius is a radio talk show host. Follow her @TaraServatius and on Facebook.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/06/tsa_now_storming_public_places_8000_times_a_tear.html at June 22, 2011 - 09:51:53 AM CDT
-
2nd post:
http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/21/what-you-dont-know-can-hurt-yo
What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
The peril of vague criminal statutes
Harvey Silverglate from the July 2011 issue
The Soviet Union enacted an infamous law in 1922 that criminalized “hooliganism.” The crime was in the eye of the beholder, the beholder of consequence being the Soviet secret police. Because it was impossible for dissidents to know in advance whether they were violating this prohibition, they were always subject to arrest and imprisonment, all ostensibly according to law.
In the United States, we have legal safeguards against Soviet-style social controls, not least of which is the judicial branch’s ability to nullify laws so vague that they violate the right to due process. Yet far too many federal laws leave citizens unsure about the line between legal and illegal conduct, punishing incorrect guesses with imprisonment. The average working American adult, going about his or her normal life, commits several arguable federal felonies a day without even realizing it. Entire lives can change based on the attention of a creative federal prosecutor interpreting vague criminal laws.
Mail Fraud for Art Supplies
Consider the federal prohibition of “mail fraud,” which mainly describes the means of a crime (“through the mails”) rather than the substantive acts that violate the law (“a scheme or artifice to defraud”). In 2004, Steven Kurtz, an art professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo, was indicted on mail fraud charges for what boiled down to a paperwork error. Federal agents, after learning that Kurtz was using bacteria in his artwork to critique genetic engineering, launched a full-scale bioterrorism investigation against him. Finding nothing pernicious about the harmless stomach flora, they resorted to a creative interpretation of the mail fraud statute. Because Kurtz had ordered the bacteria through a colleague at the University of Pittsburgh Human Genetics Laboratory, his “scheme” to “defraud” consisted of not properly indicating on the order form that the bacteria were meant for his own use.
Or consider the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 1986 law whose prohibitions—accessing a computer “without authorization,” for example—have been stretched to cover a wide swath of activity never envisioned when the bill was passed. In 2008, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles won a conviction in an online harassment case based on the theory that violating a website’s “terms of service” is a crime under this law. Thankfully, the judge rejected this interpretation and threw out the jury’s conviction.
The most dangerously far-reaching statutes tend to result from knee-jerk congressional reactions to the threat du jour. Stopping bullies, for example, is all the rage in legislatures as well as classrooms, especially given all the new ways Americans can transmit unpleasant messages. In April 2009, Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.) proposed the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, which would have made it a felony, punishable by up two to years in prison, to transmit by electronic means any message “with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person.” Sánchez named the bill after a 13-year-old Missouri girl who took her own life in 2006 after being taunted by a middle-aged woman who had assumed the online identity of a teenage boy (which led to the aforementioned online harassment case). Testifying in favor of the bill at a September 2009 hearing, Judi Westberg Warren, president of Web Wise Kids, said “speech that involves harm to others is wrong.”
That may be so, but using the criminal law to punish upsetting messages is also wrong, as well as inconsistent with constitutional freedom of speech. At the same hearing, testifying on behalf of the Cato Institute, I pointed out that the bill’s open-ended language extended far beyond adolescent (or middle-aged) bullies. Reporters, lawyers, even members of Congress are tasked daily, by virtue of their jobs, with what the bill defined as “cyberbullying.” A scathing online exposé, a stern letter emailed to an adversary, or a legislator’s principled stand articulated on Facebook might well cause someone, somewhere, to experience emotional distress. Prosecutors easily could argue that such a foreseeable effect was intended. And what about the time-honored American art of parody? If this law were passed, would Stephen Colbert be pulled off the air?
Fortunately, these and other common-sense objections seemed to hit home; the bill never made it out of committee, and it died with the 111th Congress. But the setback hasn’t stopped anti-bullying advocates, who last year introduced the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act in response to yet another high-profile tragedy, the 2010 death of a Rutgers freshman who killed himself after his roommate secretly recorded his sexual encounter with another man. Although the bill, which was reintroduced this year, would not create any new criminal provisions, it would dramatically expand the civil concept of peer-on-peer “harassment” at colleges and universities that accept federal funds. The archives of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit organization that I co-founded and currently chair, provide ample evidence that the elastic concept of harassment on campus is already the most abused tool in suppressing campus speech and expression.
While Congress has not passed anti-bullying legislation yet, it did react to the financial collapse of 2008 with a complex law that transforms many non-fraudulent financial practices into felonies. The 848-page behemoth known as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act introduced dozens of new federal offenses, many of which do not include the crucial requirement of criminal intent. For instance, the bill criminalizes any “trading, practice, or conduct” that disregards “the orderly execution of transactions during the closing period.” It also criminalizes the practice commonly known as “spoofing”—bidding or offering with the intent to cancel before execution. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission will have to define “orderly executions” and decide when a canceled bid or offer amounts to “spoofing.” In other words, dense, changeable rules issued by an unelected regulatory body will determine the difference between a legitimate trader and a felon.
Peaceniks for Terrorism
The federal ban on providing “material support” to a terrorist group, the statute that the federal government uses most frequently in prosecuting terrorism cases, provides another example of how difficult it can be to stay on the right side of the law. In 1998 the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), a human rights organization based in Los Angeles, asked a federal judge whether the material support ban, which was first enacted in 1996, applied to its planned nonviolent advocacy on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey, which appears on the State Department’s list of “foreign terrorist organizations.” The HLP wanted to train the group’s members on how to peacefully resolve disputes through international law, including methods to obtain relief from the United Nations.
Although the HLP’s plans were limited to offering advice and training aimed at avowedly peaceful ends, the answer to its legal question was by no means clear. Originally enacted as part of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which passed with broad bipartisan support following the Oklahoma City bombing, the material support statute has been amended several times, most notably by the 2001 PATRIOT Act, which added prohibitions on providing “training,” “expert advice or assistance,” and “personnel.” HLP President Ralph Fertig did not want to risk a prison sentence in finding out what the various provisions meant.
Fertig got his answer about a dozen years after initially seeking authoritative guidance, when the Supreme Court ruled that the material support law did indeed cover instruction in peaceful advocacy. In a 6-to-3 decision handed down in June 2010, the Court ruled in Holder v. HLP that the statute was not unconstitutionally vague and did not violate the right to freedom of speech or freedom of association. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts reasoned that helping terrorist organizations to resolve disputes through international bodies or obtain humanitarian relief from the United Nations inevitably would free up resources for other, more nefarious ends. Hence a “person of ordinary intelligence would understand” that such conduct constitutes “material support.”
In a vivid illustration that the material support ban is not nearly as clear as Roberts claims, Georgetown law professor David Cole, who represented the HLP before the Supreme Court, pointed out in a January 2011 New York Times op-ed that several hawks in the War on Terror may have unwittingly violated the statute. By speaking at a December 2010 conference in Paris organized by supporters of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, an Iranian opposition group, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former National Security Adviser Frances Townsend, and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani arguably coordinated their speech with a “foreign terrorist organization” and therefore, by the Supreme Court’s logic, provided it with “material support.”
These examples show that vague laws threaten Americans from all walks of life and all points on the political spectrum. Yet that depressing fact is actually encouraging, because it suggests the possibility of a broad coalition in support of much needed legal reforms, beginning with the basic principle that, absent a clearly stated prohibition, people must not be punished for conduct that is not intuitively criminal, evil, or antisocial. Otherwise we risk creating a modern American equivalent to the ban on hooliganism.
Harvey A. Silverglate (has@harveysilverglate.com), a criminal defense and civil liberty lawyer in Boston, is the author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (Encounter Books), which was just published in paperback. Kyle Smeallie helped him research and write this piece.
-
Federal immigration officials from Customs and Border Patrol swept the station with the TSA, looking for "immigration violations, threats to national security" and "bulk cash smuggling." (How the bulk cash smuggling investigation related to national security was never explained.)
Oh my god! The feds are looking for illegal aliens and threats to national security! Cue the hysterical sobbing from Libertarians.
-
You know, once upon a time, you could fly with a nuclear device or radiological materials and not get hassled by the MAN! First they came for the nukes......
On Thursday, the Transportation Security Administration completed a three-day exercise at Denver International Airport aimed at training the agency's "VIPR" teams in the use of nuclear and radiological detection equipment, said Robert Selby, assistant to the special agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshal Service's Denver field office.
VIPR stands for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response units — groups of officers TSA has assembled to patrol aviation, rail and marine facilities nationwide as a counterterrorism measure.
VIPR teams include agents with varying responsibilities: air marshals, TSA inspectors, explosives-detection canine teams, bomb appraisal officers, explosive security specialists and behavior detection officers.
They frequently include local law enforcement officers; VIPR teams patrolled numerous locations in Denver during last year's Democratic National Convention.
The drill completed at DIA on Thursday included training on three pieces of Preventative Radiological Nuclear Detection equipment, Selby said.
One is a "mini" device about the size of a pager or PDA that can be worn on a belt. A second is a hand-held "radioactive isotope identification device" that can be directed by an agent at a potential radiological source, Selby added.
The third piece of equipment that officers will use is a radiation detection backpack.
Officers can use the equipment openly at stationary positions, as they were doing at DIA on Thursday — screening passengers at one sixth-level entrance to the terminal — or they can carry some of the devices covertly as they move about the airport or other facilities, officials said.
VIPR teams are deploying the radiological devices as part of a pilot program initiated by the Homeland Security Department's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, Selby said.
"This is but another tool we have," he said, noting that for several years, VIPR teams have had explosives detection capabilities.
Read more: TSA tests capability of nuclear-detection devices at DIA - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_14022529
-
Oh my god! The feds are looking for illegal aliens and threats to national security! Cue the hysterical sobbing from Libertarians.
. . . by cordoning off and then rounding up all citizens in an area and then patting them down and doing ID checks despite the fact the only thing resembling probable cause is that said people were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a CCW holder who doesn't have a high regard for the skills most LEOs bring to encounters with legally armed citizens I suspect it's just a matter of time before SWAT wannabe "operators" shoot an otherwise innocent taxpayer who had the misfortune to look like a threat when the "team" crashed through the often times wrong door.
-
You know, once upon a time, you could fly with a nuclear device or radiological materials and not get hassled by the MAN! First they came for the nukes......
Uhm, nowhere in that piece did the feds cordon off an area, subject all within it to ID checks and then feel up citizens going about their business so your point is?
-
". . . by cordoning off and then rounding up all citizens in an area and then patting them down and doing ID checks despite the fact the only thing resembling probable cause is that said people were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Thus far, the courts have upheld administrative searches as part of screening passangers in mass transit, so this isn't just "rounding up citizens".
"As a CCW holder who doesn't have a high regard for the skills most LEOs bring to encounters with legally armed citizens I suspect it's just a matter of time before SWAT wannabe "operators" shoot an otherwise innocent taxpayer who had the misfortune to look like a threat when the "team" crashed through the often times wrong door."
I'm not sure what this has to do with VIPR teams. So, having officers without advanced tactical training serving search warrants is better?
-
You know, once upon a time, you could fly with a nuclear device or radiological materials and not get hassled by the MAN! First they came for the nukes......
Uhm, nowhere in that piece did the feds cordon off an area, subject all within it to ID checks and then feel up citizens going about their business so your point is?
Officers can use the equipment openly at stationary positions, as they were doing at DIA on Thursday — screening passengers at one sixth-level entrance to the terminal — or they can carry some of the devices covertly as they move about the airport or other facilities, officials said.
Read more: TSA tests capability of nuclear-detection devices at DIA - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_14022529
-
http://openjurist.org/482/f2d/893/united-states-v-davis
482 F.2d 893
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Charles DAVIS aka Marcus Anderson, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 71-2993.
United States Court of Appeals,
Ninth Circuit.
June 29, 1973.
-
Please use the Subject line to facilitate finding this in the future and please provide a statement of why you are posting this.
-
Why you can't print counterfeit money on a color laser printer
by Melissa Riofrio, PCWorld Jun 24, 2011 9:00 am
Could you print counterfeit money, certificates, or other official documents on a color laser or LED printer? Some current printer models are indeed capable of creating reasonable facsimiles. The authorities, however, have already taken steps to thwart such activity.
Print any nontext image on your printer, and take a very close look at it under bright light: You might just be able to make out a subtle pattern of yellow dots covering the page. Those dots are a microscopic code that allows government agencies to trace the page back to the printer that created it—making the person who pressed the Print button pretty easy to find.
How is the code printed, and what data does it contain? That's secret, of course—printer vendors remain tight-lipped about the details. In 2005, the Electronic Frontier Foundation cracked the anticounterfeiting code on a Xerox color laser printer; the documents the EFF examined were date- and time-stamped, and could be traced to the location of the printer. Digging further in 2008, the EFF used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain hundreds of pages of documents on the use of printer-tracing technology from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. According to EFF staff technologist Seth Schoen, "the strategy of the government agencies that have worked on this technology—both U.S. and foreign governments--is mainly to keep as quiet as possible and hope that as little information as possible gets out."
As color laser printers become affordable enough for small or home offices, this tracing technology is coming closer to where we all live. "We were able to buy a low-end Dell color laser that was targeted to home users for just a few hundred dollars," Schoen notes, "and it included tracking dots. It seems like they're a part of the printers that more and more people use every day."
Consumers who discover the dots are understandably surprised. Brahm's Yellow Dots, a blog dating from 2008, chronicles the efforts of Brahm Neufeld, a student at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, to communicate with his printer's vendor, Lexmark, after a friend told him about the yellow dots. To Lexmark's credit, the company eventually acknowledged what was going on and even offered to refund Neufeld for his printer. Neufeld, now an electrical engineer, remains concerned about the technology and the extreme discretion that printer vendors are exercising around it. "My motivation was always to document my experience—as a consumer--trying to get printer companies to fess up to this somewhat-shady practice."
What does all of this mean for you and your beloved color laser or LED printer? Unfortunately, you can do nothing about it, even though it means that almost anything you print on a compliant laser printer could, theoretically, be traced back to you. Consider, too, that when PCWorld reported on the yellow-dot controversy in 2004, the technology was already about 20 years old. "There's almost certainly a new-generation tracking technology that does not use yellow dots," warns Schoen. As if we needed more reasons to be paranoid.
http://www.macworld.com/article/160717/2011/06/counterfeit.html#lsrc.rss_main
-
It's just so tragic that counterfeiters face this horrific oppression. :roll:
-
Thus far, the courts have upheld administrative searches as part of screening passangers in mass transit, so this isn't just "rounding up citizens".
A finding which I think is fundamentally unAmerican and do not support, hence my posts. Or does disagreeing with any finding any court has ever made preclude us from posting?
I'm not sure what this has to do with VIPR teams. So, having officers without advanced tactical training serving search warrants is better?
My original point regarded the roving TSA checkpoints, with the piece in question citing one such cordoning effort occurring in Florida. You can't imagine an encounter with an armed citizens occurring in FL? You think TSA agents are qualified to navigate that sort of scenario? If so, you have a far higher regard for their training and leadership than I do.
-
It's just so tragic that counterfeiters face this horrific oppression.
And that all Americans can be spied on by their government without their knowledge and contrary to my understanding of constitutional protections.
-
Thus far, the courts have upheld administrative searches as part of screening passangers in mass transit, so this isn't just "rounding up citizens".
A finding which I think is fundamentally unAmerican and do not support, hence my posts. Or does disagreeing with any finding any court has ever made preclude us from posting?
I'm not sure what this has to do with VIPR teams. So, having officers without advanced tactical training serving search warrants is better?
My original point regarded the roving TSA checkpoints, with the piece in question citing one such cordoning effort occurring in Florida. You can't imagine an encounter with an armed citizens occurring in FL? You think TSA agents are qualified to navigate that sort of scenario? If so, you have a far higher regard for their training and leadership than I do.
Post whatever you want, but be prepared to have it criticized. Mass transit has and will continue to be a target for terrorists. It's reasonable to take steps to prevent that from happening rather than just sweep up the body parts and hope the terrorists get tired of mass slaughter.
As far as VIPR, there are Federal Air Marshals and others with law enforcement status doing the actual law enforcement, not just TSA screeners who are not LEOs.
-
It's just so tragic that counterfeiters face this horrific oppression.
And that all Americans can be spied on by their government without their knowledge and contrary to my understanding of constitutional protections.
Spied on? Nice inflammatory language but not exactly accurate. Where exactly is there a constitutional protection of counterfeiting?
-
Hey BBG,
Did you know your phone has something called a "phone number"? It's a number that starts with an "area code" that gives an approximate geographic area of where you live. Even worse, there are things called "phone books" that list names and the actual phone number assigned by the phone company, sometimes even with an actual street address as well!
Did you know that there are private companies that actually print up these "phone books" and give them away? Even worse, they give them to law enforcement agencies!!!!
Oh when will the spying end? This used to be a free country before phones!
-
"Mass transit has and will continue to be a target for terrorists."
- Yet we have a national policy and regional policy almost everywhere to push people into mass transit. Those who choose not to be molested should not have to pay for mass transit - in any way.
-
GM:
Dont dish it out if you can't deal with it.
Post whatever you want, but be prepared to have it criticized. Mass transit has and will continue to be a target for terrorists. It's reasonable to take steps to prevent that from happening rather than just sweep up the body parts and hope the terrorists get tired of mass slaughter.
Cogent criticism I have no qualm with. Circular criticism full of smoking holes in the landscape justifying myriad governmental transgressions are more often than not non-responsive hyperbole.
As far as VIPR, there are Federal Air Marshals and others with law enforcement status doing the actual law enforcement, not just TSA screeners who are not LEOs.
Non-responsive yet again. The feds are cordoning off areas where armed citizens are sure to be. My experience and that of many others is that LEOs don't have particularly high regard for armed citizens, see them as a potential threat, and hence tend to take things in a cuff 'em up and kneel on their head direction. Let me know if you need me to partake of your habit of citing case after case of this sort of behavior since cutting, pasting, asking stark questions and posting snide comments seem to be your preferred method of tangling.
Spied on? Nice inflammatory language but not exactly accurate. Where exactly is there a constitutional protection of counterfeiting?
I know you are not so dense as to think I'm arguing for counterfeiting so who is it that is being inflammatory? I'm arguing against the ability of the government to associate every given piece of paper printed or photocopied to a particular machine at a particular time and hence to particular people. There have been a lot of times and places where mere possession of certain political printed matter was good for a trip to the gulag or gas chamber, free speech protections ought to extend to printed material one expects to keep anonymous, and it's not hard to imagine a chilling effect once the American populace as a whole understands that just about every sheet of paper can be traced back to them.
If a policy is so critical that it must be so widely applied than there ought to be an argument made for it to the electorate. And if it is suspected that said electorate wouldn't sit still for this sort of snooping perhaps that ought to inform the thinking of those who scurry about launching these silent, complex schemes.
Did you know your phone has something called a "phone number"? It's a number that starts with an "area code" that gives an approximate geographic area of where you live. Even worse, there are things called "phone books" that list names and the actual phone number assigned by the phone company, sometimes even with an actual street address as well!
Did you know that there are private companies that actually print up these "phone books" and give them away? Even worse, they give them to law enforcement agencies!!!!
Oh when will the spying end? This used to be a free country before phones!
Hey GM:
Did you know there are these things called principles upon which this nation is founded? Perhaps you should review the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, found here:
http://www.wfu.edu/~zulick/340/Declaration.html
For each of the "long train of abuses and usurptations" there is a modern day American analogue, and for each there was no doubt a snotty 1770s Crown official who could condescendingly explain why all those concerns should be dismissed. Well fornicate that; me and mine have an inalienable right to go about our business without the proboscis of Big Government being inserted in our collective affairs and if that means some Fed actually has to work for a living rather than running a search through all the data they should not be collecting, well boo-hoo.
Indeed, let me dispose of another argument you all too often use to excuse all sorts of intrusions. I loathe golf. My first cooking gig was at a public golf course where I discovered quite quickly that the game attracts a lot of unpleasant human beings. As such I know little about the game, and have no desire to learn more. However, should I be flipping through the channels and happen to see Tiger Woods slicing a shot into the rough I'm allowed to say "Whoa, he sure shanked that one."
Should I post that comment to a blog somewhere I'm relatively confident a bunch of golf pros won't show up and argue I can't say "Tiger Woods shanked a shot," unless I'm able tell Tiger how to improve his game. I don't know if he should keep his elbow flexed or bent, his head up or down, his hips square or canted, and so on, but I can tell when a shot is shanked and can't think of a reason I shouldn't say so.
Well the TSA regularly shanks shots. Feeling up little girls in a manner that would be defined as sexual assault in any other context is a shanked shot. Taking a plastic hammer from and autistic person is a shanked shot. Not allowing a father to assist his son as the son removes a cast is a shanked shot. And so on. This principle extends to MD mayors who mistakenly endure SWAT raids where their dogs get shot, to federal habits of vacuuming up all manner of commo that they then store and cross reference in a manner utterly devoid of oversight, to VIPR round ups, et al. All those activities are in fundamental conflict with the founding principles of this nation and thus ought not to occur and I don't have to come up with a better plan before saying so.
And you know what, if an LEO is so inept and unable to investigate or prevent a crime without tinkling all over the founding principles of this nation he or she ought to have his or her fanny fired. And if law enforcement agencies make similar arguments they ought to be disbanded for trying to kill the very thing they are sworn to protect and serve. Devolve those duties to the 50 states, let those laboratories of democracy find out what works, and then export those best practices to other agencies. And I, as a citizen, don't have to come up with any plan better than that before I can say this or that law enforcement agency shanked the bejesus out of a shot.
Maybe that makes this constitutional environment to hostile for some LEOs to do there job. Fortunately there are other opportunities in other environs where those pesky constitutional protections don't apply. For instance, I understand Gaddafi is hiring so all ought to have employment opportunities commensurate with their scruples.
-
"Maybe that makes this constitutional environment to hostile for some LEOs to do there job. Fortunately there are other opportunities in other environs where those pesky constitutional protections don't apply. For instance, I understand Gaddafi is hiring so all ought to have employment opportunities commensurate with their scruples."
Citing Ka-daffy now? I guess Hitler, Stalin and Mao are taking a well-earned break from the usual hysterical screeds of how we are plunging into the depths of totalitarianism. I guess we better just burn all the books on forensic science since everything from fingerprints to toolmark analysis to DNA and hairs and fibers could be used by a totalitarian gov't to track down dissidents.
You rightfully mock the warmist hysteria "Oh god!(gaia) The poles are melting, the polar bears are drowning and AGW is going to kick your cat!"
Yet you do the exact same thing with your Libertarian police-state hypochrondria. "Oh god! The police have the ability to investigate crimes. We're doomed!"
Yes, you don't know anything about police work. Sure, you have a constitutionally protected freedom to voice your profound lack of knowledge and paranoia on the topic. I have a constitutionally protected right to criticize the uniformed and paranoid statements.
-
http://gcn.com/Articles/2009/03/16/Secret-Service-Digital-Ink.aspx
Secret Service’s ink evidence library now electronically searchable
◦By Kathleen Hickey
◦Mar 16, 2009
The Secret Service’s Digital Ink Library, used to analyze ink evidence in investigations of financial crimes and protective intelligence cases, is now electronically searchable.
The Digital Library separates ink samples into unique bands by using a solvent system and digitizes the results. As a result of being digitized, ink sample matching takes minutes as opposed to hours or days, and inks remain safe from environmental degradation and accidental contamination.
“The transition of the Secret Service’s Digital Ink Library represents an important milestone in our efforts to enhance evidence collection and analysis to enable more rapid, effective prosecution,” said David Boyd, director of the Science and Technology Directorate’s Command, Control and Interoperability Division in the Homeland Security Department. “The Digital Ink Library will significantly enhance the Secret Service’s ability to assist local, tribal, state, and federal law enforcement agencies with the investigation and identification of suspects, making our nation safer and more secure.”
The largest digital ink library of its kind, the system was created in partnership with the Secret Service, CAMAG Scientific and the University of Lausanne. The Secret Service and other federal, state, local and international law enforcement agencies are able to access nearly 10,000 digitized ink samples in the library to identify and analyze written evidence. The inks are used to investigate criminal and terrorist cases involving fraudulent financial documents, checks, money orders, property and asset documents, and threats to persons under law enforcement protection.
**Oh the humanity!
-
May 15, 2011
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'
Enlarge ImageBy Daniel J. Solove
When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don't deserve to keep it private."
The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security.
The nothing-to-hide argument is everywhere. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public-surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed-circuit television. In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear." Variations of nothing-to-hide arguments frequently appear in blogs, letters to the editor, television news interviews, and other forums. One blogger in the United States, in reference to profiling people for national-security purposes, declares: "I don't mind people wanting to find out things about me, I've got nothing to hide! Which is why I support [the government's] efforts to find terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!"
The argument is not of recent vintage. One of the characters in Henry James's 1888 novel, The Reverberator, muses: "If these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn't pity them, and if they hadn't done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people knowing."
I encountered the nothing-to-hide argument so frequently in news interviews, discussions, and the like that I decided to probe the issue. I asked the readers of my blog, Concurring Opinions, whether there are good responses to the nothing-to-hide argument. I received a torrent of comments:
My response is "So do you have curtains?" or "Can I see your credit-card bills for the last year?"
So my response to the "If you have nothing to hide ... " argument is simply, "I don't need to justify my position. You need to justify yours. Come back with a warrant."
I don't have anything to hide. But I don't have anything I feel like showing you, either.
If you have nothing to hide, then you don't have a life.
Show me yours and I'll show you mine.
It's not about having anything to hide, it's about things not being anyone else's business.
Bottom line, Joe Stalin would [have] loved it. Why should anyone have to say more?
On the surface, it seems easy to dismiss the nothing-to-hide argument. Everybody probably has something to hide from somebody. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared, "Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is." Likewise, in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's novella "Traps," which involves a seemingly innocent man put on trial by a group of retired lawyers in a mock-trial game, the man inquires what his crime shall be. "An altogether minor matter," replies the prosecutor. "A crime can always be found."
One can usually think of something that even the most open person would want to hide. As a commenter to my blog post noted, "If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph—so I can show it to your neighbors?" The Canadian privacy expert David Flaherty expresses a similar idea when he argues: "There is no sentient human being in the Western world who has little or no regard for his or her personal privacy; those who would attempt such claims cannot withstand even a few minutes' questioning about intimate aspects of their lives without capitulating to the intrusiveness of certain subject matters."
But such responses attack the nothing-to-hide argument only in its most extreme form, which isn't particularly strong. In a less extreme form, the nothing-to-hide argument refers not to all personal information but only to the type of data the government is likely to collect. Retorts to the nothing-to-hide argument about exposing people's naked bodies or their deepest secrets are relevant only if the government is likely to gather this kind of information. In many instances, hardly anyone will see the information, and it won't be disclosed to the public. Thus, some might argue, the privacy interest is minimal, and the security interest in preventing terrorism is much more important. In this less extreme form, the nothing-to-hide argument is a formidable one. However, it stems from certain faulty assumptions about privacy and its value.
To evaluate the nothing-to-hide argument, we should begin by looking at how its adherents understand privacy. Nearly every law or policy involving privacy depends upon a particular understanding of what privacy is. The way problems are conceived has a tremendous impact on the legal and policy solutions used to solve them. As the philosopher John Dewey observed, "A problem well put is half-solved."
Most attempts to understand privacy do so by attempting to locate its essence—its core characteristics or the common denominator that links together the various things we classify under the rubric of "privacy." Privacy, however, is too complex a concept to be reduced to a singular essence. It is a plurality of different things that do not share any one element but nevertheless bear a resemblance to one another. For example, privacy can be invaded by the disclosure of your deepest secrets. It might also be invaded if you're watched by a peeping Tom, even if no secrets are ever revealed. With the disclosure of secrets, the harm is that your concealed information is spread to others. With the peeping Tom, the harm is that you're being watched. You'd probably find that creepy regardless of whether the peeper finds out anything sensitive or discloses any information to others. There are many other forms of invasion of privacy, such as blackmail and the improper use of your personal data. Your privacy can also be invaded if the government compiles an extensive dossier about you.
Privacy, in other words, involves so many things that it is impossible to reduce them all to one simple idea. And we need not do so.
In many cases, privacy issues never get balanced against conflicting interests, because courts, legislators, and others fail to recognize that privacy is implicated. People don't acknowledge certain problems, because those problems don't fit into a particular one-size-fits-all conception of privacy. Regardless of whether we call something a "privacy" problem, it still remains a problem, and problems shouldn't be ignored. We should pay attention to all of the different problems that spark our desire to protect privacy.
To describe the problems created by the collection and use of personal data, many commentators use a metaphor based on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell depicted a harrowing totalitarian society ruled by a government called Big Brother that watches its citizens obsessively and demands strict discipline. The Orwell metaphor, which focuses on the harms of surveillance (such as inhibition and social control), might be apt to describe government monitoring of citizens. But much of the data gathered in computer databases, such as one's race, birth date, gender, address, or marital status, isn't particularly sensitive. Many people don't care about concealing the hotels they stay at, the cars they own, or the kind of beverages they drink. Frequently, though not always, people wouldn't be inhibited or embarrassed if others knew this information.
Another metaphor better captures the problems: Franz Kafka's The Trial. Kafka's novel centers around a man who is arrested but not informed why. He desperately tries to find out what triggered his arrest and what's in store for him. He finds out that a mysterious court system has a dossier on him and is investigating him, but he's unable to learn much more. The Trial depicts a bureaucracy with inscrutable purposes that uses people's information to make important decisions about them, yet denies the people the ability to participate in how their information is used.
The problems portrayed by the Kafkaesque metaphor are of a different sort than the problems caused by surveillance. They often do not result in inhibition. Instead they are problems of information processing—the storage, use, or analysis of data—rather than of information collection. They affect the power relationships between people and the institutions of the modern state. They not only frustrate the individual by creating a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, but also affect social structure by altering the kind of relationships people have with the institutions that make important decisions about their lives.
Legal and policy solutions focus too much on the problems under the Orwellian metaphor—those of surveillance—and aren't adequately addressing the Kafkaesque problems—those of information processing. The difficulty is that commentators are trying to conceive of the problems caused by databases in terms of surveillance when, in fact, those problems are different.
Commentators often attempt to refute the nothing-to-hide argument by pointing to things people want to hide. But the problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things. By accepting this assumption, we concede far too much ground and invite an unproductive discussion about information that people would very likely want to hide. As the computer-security specialist Schneier aptly notes, the nothing-to-hide argument stems from a faulty "premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong." Surveillance, for example, can inhibit such lawful activities as free speech, free association, and other First Amendment rights essential for democracy.
The deeper problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is that it myopically views privacy as a form of secrecy. In contrast, understanding privacy as a plurality of related issues demonstrates that the disclosure of bad things is just one among many difficulties caused by government security measures. To return to my discussion of literary metaphors, the problems are not just Orwellian but Kafkaesque. Government information-gathering programs are problematic even if no information that people want to hide is uncovered. In The Trial, the problem is not inhibited behavior but rather a suffocating powerlessness and vulnerability created by the court system's use of personal data and its denial to the protagonist of any knowledge of or participation in the process. The harms are bureaucratic ones—indifference, error, abuse, frustration, and lack of transparency and accountability.
One such harm, for example, which I call aggregation, emerges from the fusion of small bits of seemingly innocuous data. When combined, the information becomes much more telling. By joining pieces of information we might not take pains to guard, the government can glean information about us that we might indeed wish to conceal. For example, suppose you bought a book about cancer. This purchase isn't very revealing on its own, for it indicates just an interest in the disease. Suppose you bought a wig. The purchase of a wig, by itself, could be for a number of reasons. But combine those two pieces of information, and now the inference can be made that you have cancer and are undergoing chemotherapy. That might be a fact you wouldn't mind sharing, but you'd certainly want to have the choice.
Another potential problem with the government's harvest of personal data is one I call exclusion. Exclusion occurs when people are prevented from having knowledge about how information about them is being used, and when they are barred from accessing and correcting errors in that data. Many government national-security measures involve maintaining a huge database of information that individuals cannot access. Indeed, because they involve national security, the very existence of these programs is often kept secret. This kind of information processing, which blocks subjects' knowledge and involvement, is a kind of due-process problem. It is a structural problem, involving the way people are treated by government institutions and creating a power imbalance between people and the government. To what extent should government officials have such a significant power over citizens? This issue isn't about what information people want to hide but about the power and the structure of government.
A related problem involves secondary use. Secondary use is the exploitation of data obtained for one purpose for an unrelated purpose without the subject's consent. How long will personal data be stored? How will the information be used? What could it be used for in the future? The potential uses of any piece of personal information are vast. Without limits on or accountability for how that information is used, it is hard for people to assess the dangers of the data's being in the government's control.
Yet another problem with government gathering and use of personal data is distortion. Although personal information can reveal quite a lot about people's personalities and activities, it often fails to reflect the whole person. It can paint a distorted picture, especially since records are reductive—they often capture information in a standardized format with many details omitted.
For example, suppose government officials learn that a person has bought a number of books on how to manufacture methamphetamine. That information makes them suspect that he's building a meth lab. What is missing from the records is the full story: The person is writing a novel about a character who makes meth. When he bought the books, he didn't consider how suspicious the purchase might appear to government officials, and his records didn't reveal the reason for the purchases. Should he have to worry about government scrutiny of all his purchases and actions? Should he have to be concerned that he'll wind up on a suspicious-persons list? Even if he isn't doing anything wrong, he may want to keep his records away from government officials who might make faulty inferences from them. He might not want to have to worry about how everything he does will be perceived by officials nervously monitoring for criminal activity. He might not want to have a computer flag him as suspicious because he has an unusual pattern of behavior.
The nothing-to-hide argument focuses on just one or two particular kinds of privacy problems—the disclosure of personal information or surveillance—while ignoring the others. It assumes a particular view about what privacy entails, to the exclusion of other perspectives.
It is important to distinguish here between two ways of justifying a national-security program that demands access to personal information. The first way is not to recognize a problem. This is how the nothing-to-hide argument works—it denies even the existence of a problem. The second is to acknowledge the problems but contend that the benefits of the program outweigh the privacy sacrifice. The first justification influences the second, because the low value given to privacy is based upon a narrow view of the problem. And the key misunderstanding is that the nothing-to-hide argument views privacy in this troublingly particular, partial way.
Investigating the nothing-to-hide argument a little more deeply, we find that it looks for a singular and visceral kind of injury. Ironically, this underlying conception of injury is sometimes shared by those advocating for greater privacy protections. For example, the University of South Carolina law professor Ann Bartow argues that in order to have a real resonance, privacy problems must "negatively impact the lives of living, breathing human beings beyond simply provoking feelings of unease." She says that privacy needs more "dead bodies," and that privacy's "lack of blood and death, or at least of broken bones and buckets of money, distances privacy harms from other [types of harm]."
Bartow's objection is actually consistent with the nothing-to-hide argument. Those advancing the nothing-to-hide argument have in mind a particular kind of appalling privacy harm, one in which privacy is violated only when something deeply embarrassing or discrediting is revealed. Like Bartow, proponents of the nothing-to-hide argument demand a dead-bodies type of harm.
Bartow is certainly right that people respond much more strongly to blood and death than to more-abstract concerns. But if this is the standard to recognize a problem, then few privacy problems will be recognized. Privacy is not a horror movie, most privacy problems don't result in dead bodies, and demanding evidence of palpable harms will be difficult in many cases.
Privacy is often threatened not by a single egregious act but by the slow accretion of a series of relatively minor acts. In this respect, privacy problems resemble certain environmental harms, which occur over time through a series of small acts by different actors. Although society is more likely to respond to a major oil spill, gradual pollution by a multitude of actors often creates worse problems.
Privacy is rarely lost in one fell swoop. It is usually eroded over time, little bits dissolving almost imperceptibly until we finally begin to notice how much is gone. When the government starts monitoring the phone numbers people call, many may shrug their shoulders and say, "Ah, it's just numbers, that's all." Then the government might start monitoring some phone calls. "It's just a few phone calls, nothing more." The government might install more video cameras in public places. "So what? Some more cameras watching in a few more places. No big deal." The increase in cameras might lead to a more elaborate network of video surveillance. Satellite surveillance might be added to help track people's movements. The government might start analyzing people's bank rec ords. "It's just my deposits and some of the bills I pay—no problem." The government may then start combing through credit-card records, then expand to Internet-service providers' records, health records, employment records, and more. Each step may seem incremental, but after a while, the government will be watching and knowing everything about us.
"My life's an open book," people might say. "I've got nothing to hide." But now the government has large dossiers of everyone's activities, interests, reading habits, finances, and health. What if the government leaks the information to the public? What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts? What if the government doesn't protect your information with adequate security, and an identity thief obtains it and uses it to defraud you? Even if you have nothing to hide, the government can cause you a lot of harm.
"But the government doesn't want to hurt me," some might argue. In many cases, that's true, but the government can also harm people inadvertently, due to errors or carelessness.
When the nothing-to-hide argument is unpacked, and its underlying assumptions examined and challenged, we can see how it shifts the debate to its terms, then draws power from its unfair advantage. The nothing-to-hide argument speaks to some problems but not to others. It represents a singular and narrow way of conceiving of privacy, and it wins by excluding consideration of the other problems often raised with government security measures. When engaged directly, the nothing-to-hide argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the nothing-to-hide argument, in the end, has nothing to say.
Daniel J. Solove is a professor of law at George Washington University. This essay is an excerpt from his new book, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security, published this month by Yale University Press.
-
One can usually think of something that even the most open person would want to hide. As a commenter to my blog post noted, "If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph—so I can show it to your neighbors?" The Canadian privacy expert David Flaherty expresses a similar idea when he argues: "There is no sentient human being in the Western world who has little or no regard for his or her personal privacy; those who would attempt such claims cannot withstand even a few minutes' questioning about intimate aspects of their lives without capitulating to the intrusiveness of certain subject matters."
**Would someone who walks naked in public areas have a right of privacy that prevents them from being photographed? Or is there a requirement that if one wishes to assert privacy rights, that one actually takes steps to preserve that privacy?
But such responses attack the nothing-to-hide argument only in its most extreme form, which isn't particularly strong. In a less extreme form, the nothing-to-hide argument refers not to all personal information but only to the type of data the government is likely to collect. Retorts to the nothing-to-hide argument about exposing people's naked bodies or their deepest secrets are relevant only if the government is likely to gather this kind of information. In many instances, hardly anyone will see the information, and it won't be disclosed to the public. Thus, some might argue, the privacy interest is minimal, and the security interest in preventing terrorism is much more important. In this less extreme form, the nothing-to-hide argument is a formidable one. However, it stems from certain faulty assumptions about privacy and its value.
To evaluate the nothing-to-hide argument, we should begin by looking at how its adherents understand privacy. Nearly every law or policy involving privacy depends upon a particular understanding of what privacy is. The way problems are conceived has a tremendous impact on the legal and policy solutions used to solve them. As the philosopher John Dewey observed, "A problem well put is half-solved."
Of course, this is a strawman arguement typically found in this and other Libertarian threads. It's not a matter of "not having anything to hide", it's about balancing individual rights and freedoms with national security and public safety. The Libertarians that decry law enforcement never seem to leave this "statist" country for the various places on the planet without governments in place. Funny enough, without the rule of law, freedom tends to not mean much.
-
"**Would someone who walks naked in public areas have a right of privacy that prevents them from being photographed? Or is there a requirement that if one wishes to assert privacy rights, that one actually takes steps to preserve that privacy?"
The problem arises when the government shoves a camera down your pants or up your anus.
More precisely, the point being made here is different than the straw man you attack. The point is that people do and should have a right to privacy-- and that the "well if you have nothing to hide" argument is unsound.
-
"The problem arises when the government shoves a camera down your pants or up your anus."
I missed that one? Where and when are cameras going into anal cavities?
"The point is that people do and should have a right to privacy-- and that the "well if you have nothing to hide" argument is unsound."
As has been discussed in detail, the courts recognize a "reasonable expectation of privacy". In your home with the blinds drawn is on the upper end of that, walking naked in public, not so much.
-
The point being addressed here is the "Well, if you have nothing to hide argument". May I take your response to mean that you agree that the argument is unsound?
-
Yes, the arguement is unsound. I don't want to live in a society where police have unlimited powers.
-
8-) 8-) 8-)
-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/04/news-of-the-world-hacked-milly-dowler_n_889809.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/06/news-of-the-world-hacking_n_891333.html#s303541&title=March_2002
-
San Francisco’s crime cameras were first installed in 2005 as a crime-fighting tool when The City’s homicide tally reached a decade-high 96. Advocates billed the cameras, which continuously record the activities in crime hot spots throughout San Francisco, as a creative new way to deter illegal behavior.
For a map of locations of San Francisco's crime cameras and more information, click on the photo to the right.
But the cameras have since become more than just a crime-fighting tool. They have also become a tool exploited by defense lawyers who often seek footage from the cameras to exonerate falsely accused clients. The footage is not monitored in real time, but can be reviewed upon request by attorneys, police and prosecutors.
Nearly one-third of 109 requests for footage made last year came from defense attorneys, according to data supplied by The City in response to a public records request by The San Francisco Examiner.
Criminal defendants have been cleared or had charges reduced when footage proved their alibis or disproved police or witnesses’ accounts of incidents.
“We’ve incorporated the existence of surveillance tapes into our practice,” Public Defender Jeff Adachi said, adding that his office has a list of all the city surveillance cameras and his attorneys are trained to request the footage.
“It is hit or miss. You have an obligation to secure that evidence,” Adachi said. “They have proven valuable in some cases.”
Deputy Public Defender Kwixuan Maloof was the defense attorney in one of the more well-known cases where surveillance camera footage resulted in someone being exonerated. Maloof’s client, 44-year-old Michael Cooper, had a 2008 murder charge dropped when the footage showed Cooper was acting in defense of a disabled woman.
“In that case, there were witnesses that gave statements to the police that were blatantly false,” Maloof said.
The 71 cameras, once at the center of budget battles and political sparring over civil liberties, remain in operation in 24 locations, selected for their high-crime concentrations. The system costs $200,000 annually to operate.
Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/crime/2011/07/san-franciscos-crime-cameras-zoom-innocent
-
Very interesting. While I still do not like the presence of cameras on every street corner, the unintended consequence here is a nice one. Thanks for sharing this article also.
-
Very interesting. While I still do not like the presence of cameras on every street corner, the unintended consequence here is a nice one. Thanks for sharing this article also.
Evidence is evidence. The evidentiary techniques that can lead to convictions can also lead to acquittals. DNA can put a guilty man on death row, and free an innocent from it.
-
I'm with BD on this.
-
Obviously cameras are not a crime fighting silver bullet, though there are certain locations where they are useful. At 200,000 dollars a year, I think it is worthwhile. Given salary and benefits, 200,000 probably would barely cover the cost of two entry level SFPD officers.
-
The Investigation into the Death of Leibby Kletzky
From the moment Leibby disappeared to his horrifying discovery, the investigation moved at a rapid pace. Police were able to quickly piece together surveillance video that led them to Levi Aron and the little boy's body. Pei-Sze Cheng takes us through the investigation step by step.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/The_Investigation_in_the_Death_of_Leiby_Kletzky_New_York-125541418.html
-
http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/wpix-missing-boy-body,0,4230265.story?track=rss
Commissioner Kelly said that police arrested Aron at his home at 466 East 2nd St. in Brooklyn at 2:40 Wednesday morning. When cops first stormed up to Aron's third-floor attic apartment at 2:00 A.M., they found the door ajar, Kelly said. Detectives asked Aron where the boy was, and Aron pointed to the refrigerator in his apartment. Cops found blood stains on the refrigerator door, which they opened to find a bloody cutting board, a knife and body parts.
"[Aron] killed him [in the apartment], then dismembered the body," Commissioner Kelly said at a press briefing at Police Headquarters Wednesday morning. Further questioning resulted in Aron telling detectives that he had moved more of the boy's remains to a dumpster two miles away in South Park Slope.
Police responded to that dumpster on 20th Street near 4th Avenue minutes later. Inside, they found a plastic bag inside a suitcase. Inside that bag were some of the boy's remains.
"I heard [the detectives] say they had a head and a torso," Samantha Hernandez told PIX11 News.
She lives in an apartment building two doors up from where the dumpster was, and watched the scene unfold outside her window. She and her brother also ran up to the roof of their building to see what was unfolding in the early morning investigation.
"They had a... bag," she said, "tied at both ends, and it wasn't as long as the boy['s body] that I saw on the video."
She's talking about surveillance video of the last minutes before Leiby Kletzky (pronounced, "Lye - bee Kletz - key") vanished.
In the video, the boy wanders around the corner of 18th Avenue and Dahill Road in Borough Park around 5:30 p.m. Monday, then is approached by a man. Commissioner Kelly identified the man as Aron. Kelly said that the boy had been walking home from his day camp for the first time ever and got lost. Leiby Klotzky apparently asked Aron for directions. Aron talkes with the boy, then leaves to go into a nearby dentist's office to pay a bill. For seven minutes, Leiby waits on the corner, possibly having been told by Aron to stay there. Aron returns, and the boy who's been described as autistic ends up getting into a 1990 gold-colored Honda with Aron.
That car, according to the commissioner, was found by volunteer community searchers near Aron's home, which is about six blocks from where the surveillance video was recorded. The volunteers alerted police in one of two major breaks in the case, according to Commissioner Kelly.
The other break came from the dentist's office out of which Levi Aron emerged to pick up the boy. Detectives reached the dentist at his home in New Jersey overnight Tuesday and got access to records showing that Levi Aron had been in the dentist's office minutes before Kletzky disappeared. That linked Aron to the surveillance video and the license plate number of the car that volunteers found matched Aron as well.
Once investigators connected the clues, they swooped in, and the case quickly unfolded.
-
I noted that when I read about the case. A powerful example for your POV.
-
http://volokh.com/2011/07/15/dc-circuit-holds-that-new-airport-screening-security-measures-comply-with-the-fourth-amendment/
DC Circuit Holds that New Airport Screening Security Measures Comply With the Fourth Amendment
Orin Kerr • July 15, 2011 11:19 am
The new airport screening measures involving millimeter wave technology and backscatter technology — together with the opt-out of a pat-down — have received a great deal of public attention. Back when the new measures were first widely introduced, I blogged about why a Fourth Amendment challenge to the new practices was an uphill battle. Today, the DC Circuit handed down an opinion in EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security holding that the new practices comply with the Fourth Amendment. I believe this is the first clear court ruling on the question, and it’s certainly the first from a federal court of appeals. The opinion is by Judge Douglas Ginsburg, and it was joined by Judges Henderson and Tatel. From the opinion:
[T]he petitioners argue that using [Advanced Imaging Technology] AIT for primary screening violates the Fourth Amendment because it is more invasive than is necessary to detect weapons or explosives. In view of the Supreme Court’s “repeated[] refus[al] to declare that only the least intrusive search practicable can be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” City of Ontario v. Quon, 130 S. Ct. 2619, 2632 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted), and considering the measures taken by the TSA to safeguard personal privacy, we hold AIT screening does not violate the Fourth Amendment.
As other circuits have held, and as the Supreme Court has strongly suggested, screening passengers at an airport is an “administrative search” because the primary goal is not to determine whether any passenger has committed a crime but rather to protect the public from a terrorist attack. See United States v. Aukai, 497 F.3d 955, 958–63 (9th Cir. 2007) (en banc) (passenger search at airport checkpoint); United States v. Hartwell, 436 F.3d 174, 178–81 (3d Cir. 2006) (Alito, J.) (same); United States v. Edwards, 498 F.2d 496, 499–501 (2d Cir. 1974) (Friendly, J.) (carry-on baggage search at airport); see also Illinois v. Lidster, 540 U.S. 419 (2004) (police set up checkpoint to obtain information about earlier crash); Mich. Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990) (sobriety checkpoint). An administrative search does not require individualized suspicion. City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32, 41, 47–48 (2000) (individualized suspicion required when police checkpoint is “primarily [for] general crime control,” that is, “to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing” unlike “searches at places like airports ... where the need for such measures to ensure public safety can be particularly acute”). Instead, whether an administrative search is “unreasonable” within the condemnation of the Fourth Amendment “is determined by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual’s privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests.” United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 118–19 (2001) (internal quotation marks omitted).
That balance clearly favors the Government here. The need to search airline passengers “to ensure public safety can be particularly acute,” Edmond, 531 U.S. at 47–48, and, crucially, an AIT scanner, unlike a magnetometer, is capable of detecting, and therefore of deterring, attempts to carry aboard airplanes explosives in liquid or powder form. On the other side of the balance, we must acknowledge the steps the TSA has already taken to protect passenger privacy, in particular distorting the image created using AIT and deleting it as soon as the passenger has been cleared. More telling, any passenger may opt-out of AIT screening in favor of a patdown, which allows him to decide which of the two options for detecting a concealed, nonmetallic weapon or explosive is least invasive.
Contrary to the EPIC’s argument, it is not determinative that AIT is not the last step in a potentially escalating series of search techniques. In Hartwell, from which the petitioners tease out this argument, the Third Circuit upheld an airport search that started with a walk-through magnetometer, thence to scanning with a hand-held magnetometer and, when the TSA officer encountered a bulge in the passenger’s pocket, progressed (according to the passenger) to the officer’s removing a package of crack cocaine from that pocket. 436 F.3d at 175–76. The court noted, however, that its opinion, while describing the search at issue there as “minimally intrusive,” did “not purport to set the outer limits of intrusiveness in the airport context.” Id. at 180 & n.10. Nothing in Hartwell, that is, suggests the AIT scanners must be minimally intrusive to be consistent with the Fourth Amendment.
It’s a bit surprising, given the public controversy, that the analysis here was so sparse. It seems that Judge Ginsburg didn’t even think it required any heavy lifting — just a quick paragraph or two. And notably, no one wrote separately. That’s particularly interesting given that this opinion is from a pretty Fourth-Amendment-rights-friendly panel: Note that Judge Ginsburg authored the recent Maynard decision holding that GPS surveillance requires a warrant, which also was joined by Judge Tatel.
It is also worth noting that another part of the same decision sends back the DHS rule on procedural admin law grounds, so the ultimate ruling is a partial victory for the challengers to the new policy. I see that Eugene has just blogged on that issue below, so please post any comments relating to the non-Fourth Amendment parts in the thread attached to Eugene’s post.
Thanks to Adam J. White for the link.
-
I have taught my children never to assume that a person with a badge at the door is a police officer and to call the police if someone knocks on the door when I am not home. This is common practice, because safety experts realized a long time ago that people can pose as police officers to enter the home.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/07/23/norway.explosion/index.html?iref=BN1&hpt=hp_t1
It was while authorities were searching for survivors of the mid-afternoon bombing in Oslo that a man wearing a police uniform and identifying himself as a officer arrived by boat at Utoya island, where word was spreading among the campers about the explosion in the capital, Pracon said.
The hundreds teens and young adults attending the camp were gathered in a large meeting room where camp organizers were sharing information about the bombing in Olso when the police officer asked if he could address the group, Pracon said.
"We, of course, allowed him to come" in and address the group, Pracon said.
-
I have taught my children never to assume that a person with a badge at the door is a police officer and to call the police if someone knocks on the door when I am not home. This is common practice, because safety experts realized a long time ago that people can pose as police officers to enter the home.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/07/23/norway.explosion/index.html?iref=BN1&hpt=hp_t1
It was while authorities were searching for survivors of the mid-afternoon bombing in Oslo that a man wearing a police uniform and identifying himself as a officer arrived by boat at Utoya island, where word was spreading among the campers about the explosion in the capital, Pracon said.
The hundreds teens and young adults attending the camp were gathered in a large meeting room where camp organizers were sharing information about the bombing in Olso when the police officer asked if he could address the group, Pracon said.
"We, of course, allowed him to come" in and address the group, Pracon said.
Note: This was written prior to the BTK killer having been captured.
FBI Profiler John Douglas in the book Obsession has a chapter on the BTK strangler. It is the chapter called "Motivation X". Within the book, Douglas states that there were no defensive wounds found on any of the victims, assuming that the killer used a gun to control them. He further stated that the killer's letters to the police had so much detail that he is convinced that the perpetrator had taken his own crime scene photos in order to have a keepsake of the crime to fantasize about later.
Douglas states that the killer used police lingo in his letters - Douglas thinks he may actually be a cop, or may impersonate a cop - he probably reads detective magazines and may have even bought a police badge. He would attempt to insert himself in the investigation. He would be tempted to brag or leave hints about what he had done.
Douglas states that the killer was in all probability a loner, inadequate, in his 20s or 30s, might possibly have an arrest record for break-ins or voyeurism, but probably no actual rapes.
-
This is a fascinating subject you broach here GM, but I am thinking the Security thread or the Citizen-Police Interaction thread on the MA forum might be a better place for it.
-
CRYPTO-GRAM
August 15, 2011
by Bruce Schneier
Chief Security Technology Officer, BT
schneier@schneier.com
http://www.schneier.com
A free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on security: computer and otherwise.
For back issues, or to subscribe, visit <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>.
You can read this issue on the web at
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1108.html>. These same essays and news items appear in the "Schneier on Security" blog at <http://www.schneier.com/blog>, along with a lively comment section. An RSS feed is available.
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
In this issue:
Developments in Facial Recognition
News
Schneier News
Is There a Hacking Epidemic?
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Developments in Facial Recognition
Eventually, it will work. You'll be able to wear a camera that will automatically recognize someone walking towards you, and a earpiece that will relay who that person is and maybe something about him. None of the technologies required to make this work are hard; it's just a matter of getting the error rate down low enough for it to be a useful system.
And there have been a number of recent research results and news stories that illustrate what this new world might look like.
The police want this sort of system. MORIS is an iris-scanning technology that several police forces in the U.S. are using. The next step is the face-scanning glasses that the Brazilian police claim they will be wearing at the 2014 World Cup.
A small camera fitted to the glasses can capture 400 facial images
per second and send them to a central computer database storing up
to 13 million faces.
The system can compare biometric data at 46,000 points on a face
and will immediately signal any matches to known criminals or
people wanted by police.
In the future, this sort of thing won't be limited to the police.
Facebook has recently embarked on a major photo tagging project, and already has the largest collection of identified photographs in the world outside of a government. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have combined the public part of that database with a camera and face-recognition software to identify students on campus. (The paper fully describing their work is under review and not online yet, but slides describing the results can be found here.)
Of course, there are false positives -- as there are with any system like this. That's not a big deal if the application is a billboard with face-recognition serving different ads depending on the gender and age
-- and eventually the identity -- of the person looking at it, but is more problematic if the application is a legal one.
In Boston, someone erroneously had his driver's license revoked:
It turned out Gass was flagged because he looks like another
driver, not because his image was being used to create a fake
identity. His driving privileges were returned but, he alleges in a
lawsuit, only after 10 days of bureaucratic wrangling to prove he
is who he says he is.
And apparently, he has company. Last year, the facial recognition
system picked out more than 1,000 cases that resulted in State
Police investigations, officials say. And some of those people are
guilty of nothing more than looking like someone else. Not all go
through the long process that Gass says he endured, but each must
visit the Registry with proof of their identity.
[...]
At least 34 states are using such systems. They help authorities
verify a person's claimed identity and track down people who have
multiple licenses under different aliases, such as underage people
wanting to buy alcohol, people with previous license suspensions,
and people with criminal records trying to evade the law.
The problem is less with the system, and more with the guilty-until-proven-innocent way in which the system is used.
Kaprielian said the Registry gives drivers enough time to respond
to the suspension letters and that it is the individual's
"burden'" to clear up any confusion. She added that protecting
the public far outweighs any inconvenience Gass or anyone else
might experience.
"A driver's license is not a matter of civil rights. It's not a
right. It's a privilege," she said. "Yes, it is an inconvenience
[to have to clear your name], but lots of people have their
identities stolen, and that's an inconvenience, too."
Related, there's a system embedded in a pair of glasses that automatically analyzes and relays micro-facial expressions. The goal is to help autistic people who have trouble reading emotions, but you could easily imagine this sort of thing becoming common. And what happens when we start relying on these computerized systems and ignoring our own intuition?
And finally, CV Dazzle is camouflage from face detection.
MORIS:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/07/iphone_iris_sca.html
Brazilian face-scanning glasses:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/04/brazilian-police-will-have-face.html
Facebook photo tagging:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/229870/facebook_photo_tagging_a_privacy_guide.html
or http://tinyurl.com/3pbqmof
Carnegie Mellon research:
http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/08/01/how-face-recognition-can-be-used-to-get-your-social-security-number/
or http://tinyurl.com/42fl3m2
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/08/01/tech-today-using-facebook-and-facial-recognition-to-id-random-people/
or http://tinyurl.com/3dodgu2
http://pda.physorg.com/news/2011-08-facial-recognition-software-reveal-social.html
or http://tinyurl.com/3o4fty9
http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/face-recognition-study-FAQ/
Billboard with face-recognition:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/04/billboards-with-facial-recognition-software-trickling-out/
or http://tinyurl.com/4o9ltd
Boston false positive:
http://articles.boston.com/2011-07-17/news/29784761_1_fight-identity-fraud-facial-recognition-system-license
or http://tinyurl.com/3sppab3
IEEE Spectrum and The Economist have published similar articles.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/heres-looking-at-you-and-you-and-you-
or http://tinyurl.com/3rfuusw
http://www.economist.com/node/21524829
Micro facial expression analysis glasses.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128191.600-specs-that-see-right-through-you.html
or http://tinyurl.com/64won9f
CV Dazzle:
http://www.core77.com/blog/core77_design_awards/core77_design_award_2011_cv_dazzle_student_winner_for_speculative_objectsconcepts_20115.asp
or http://tinyurl.com/3w4lhcs
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
News
Ross Anderson discusses the technical and policy details of the British
phone hacking scandal.
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2011/07/16/phone-hacking-technology-and-policy/
or http://tinyurl.com/3lhz8fn
This is really clever: the Telex anti-censorship system uses deep-packet
inspection to avoid Internet censorship.
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/jhalderm/anticensorship-internets-infrastructure
or http://tinyurl.com/4yhnwm6
https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/researchers-develop-end-middle-proxy-system-evade-censorship-071811
or http://tinyurl.com/3lzntqt
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/researchers-develop-end-to-middle-anti-censorship-tech.ars
The police arrested sixteen suspected members of the Anonymous hacker group.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/07/members_of_anon.html
Google detects malware in its search data, and alerts users. There's a
lot that Google sees as a result of its unique and prominent position in
the Internet. Some of it is going to be stuff they never considered.
And while they use a lot of it to make money, it's good of them to give
this one back to the Internet users.
http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/07/using-data-to-protect-people-from.html
or http://tinyurl.com/3v8zuzd
Smuggling drugs in unwitting people's car trunks.
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/21/138548294/at-border-teacher-becomes-unwitting-drug-smuggler
or http://tinyurl.com/4yumaou
This attack works because 1) there's a database of keys available to
lots of people, and 2) both the SENTRI system and the victims are
predictable.
Revenge effects of too-safe playground equipment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19tierney.html
iPhone iris scanning technology:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/20/us-crime-identification-iris-idUSTRE76J4A120110720
or http://tinyurl.com/44fdowt
Good article on liabilities and computer security.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/will-your-employer-get-sued-for-your-security-screw-ups.ars
or http://tinyurl.com/3nx4wkv
I've been talking about liabilities for about a decade now. Here are
essays I wrote in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2006.
http://www.schneier.com/essay-369.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-025.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-073.html
http://www.schneier.com/essay-116.html
Matt Blaze analyzes the 2010 U.S. Wiretap Report.
http://www.crypto.com/blog/wiretap2010/
I second Matt's recommendation of Susan Landau's book "Surveillance or
Security: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies" (MIT Press,
2011). It's an excellent discussion of the security and politics of
wiretapping.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262015307/counterpane/
Data privacy as a prisoner's dilemma: a good analysis.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/why-the-us-needs-a-data-privacy-lawand-why-it-might-actually-happen.ars
or http://tinyurl.com/3n2gytv
The solution -- and one endorsed by the essay -- is a comprehensive
privacy law. That reduces the incentive to defect.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/07/data_privacy_as.html
ShareMeNot is a Firefox add-on for preventing tracking from third-party
buttons (like the Facebook "Like" button or the Google "+1" button)
until the user actually chooses to interact with them. That is,
ShareMeNot doesn't disable/remove these buttons completely. Rather, it
allows them to render on the page, but prevents the cookies from being
sent until the user actually clicks on them, at which point ShareMeNot
releases the cookies and the user gets the desired behavior (i.e., they
can Like or +1 the page).
http://sharemenot.cs.washington.edu/
Hacking Apple laptop batteries.
https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/apple-laptop-batteries-can-be-bricked-firmware-hacked-072211
or http://tinyurl.com/43zgnpw
Bypassing the lock on luggage.
http://kipkay.com/videos/just-for-fun/is-your-luggage-safe-from-airport-security/
or http://tinyurl.com/3hv3dld
Interesting paper: "Science Fiction Prototyping and Security Education:
Cultivating Contextual and Societal Thinking in Computer Security
Education and Beyond," by Tadayoshi Kohno and Brian David Johnson.
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/yoshi/papers/SIGCSE/csefp118-kohno.pdf or
http://tinyurl.com/3ecj6c3
Breaking the Xilinx Virtex-II FPGA bitstream encryption. It's a
power-analysis attack, which makes it much harder to defend against.
And since the attack model is an engineer trying to reverse-engineer the
chip, it's a valid attack.
http://eprint.iacr.org/2011/390
Attacking embedded systems in prison doors.
http://m.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/prison-plc-vulnerabilities/
This seems like a minor risk today; Stuxnet was a military-grade effort,
and beyond the reach of your typical criminal organization. But that
can only change, as people study and learn from the reverse-engineered
Stuxnet code and as hacking PLCs becomes more common. As we move from
mechanical, or even electro-mechanical, systems to digital systems, and
as we network those digital systems, this sort of vulnerability is going
to only become more common.
The article is in the context of the big Facebook lawsuit, but the part
about identifying people by their writing style is interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24gray.html
It seems reasonable that we have a linguistic fingerprint, although 1)
there are far fewer of them than finger fingerprints, 2) they're easier
to fake. It's probably not much of a stretch to take that software that
"identifies bundles of linguistic features, hundreds in all" and use the
data to automatically modify my writing to look like someone else's.
A good criticism of the science behind author recognition, and a paper
on how to evade these systems.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3317
http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/IAAI/IAAI09/paper/view/257
Seems that the one-time pad was not first invented by Vernam.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/science/26code.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/26/perfect_cipher_crypto_discovery/
or http://tinyurl.com/3cbv8me
The paper:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01611194.2011.583711
Two items on hacking lotteries. The first is about someone who figured
out how to spot winners in a scratch-off tic-tac-toe style game, and a
daily draw style game where expected payout can exceed the ticket price.
The second is about someone who has won the lottery four times, with
speculation that she had advance knowledge of where and when certain
jackpot-winning scratch-off tickets would be sold.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/broken-lotteries/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/60495831/Nathaniel-Rich-The-Luckiest-Woman-on-Earth-Three-Ways-to-Win-the-Lottery
Home-made Wi-Fi hacking, phone snooping, UAV.
http://www.geekosystem.com/tag/wireless-aerial-surveillance-platform/
German police call airport full-body scanners useless.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jGUyRTjF-WA40GLjIMEo6dFgSxlw?docId=CNG.d76d1890df3edca8dd08181cb6808c7f.881
or http://tinyurl.com/4y9dvud
Here's a story about full-body scanners that are overly sensitive to
sweaty armpits.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20086884-71/new-airport-scanners-alarmed-by-sweaty-armpits/
or http://tinyurl.com/3slpxgo
The Zodiac cipher was announced as cracked, but the break was a hoax.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/08/zodiac_cipher_c.html
XKCD on the CIA hack.
http://www.xkcd.com/932/
I've been using the phrase "arms race" to describe the world's
militaries' rush into cyberspace for a couple of years now. Here's a
good article on the topic that uses the same phrase.
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/cyber-weapons-the-new-arms-race-07212011.html
or http://tinyurl.com/3ehcpa8
New bank-fraud Trojan.
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/07/trojan-tricks-victims-into-transfering-funds/
or http://tinyurl.com/4y8cof5
An article on MRI lie detectors -- lots of interesting research.
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/07/23/lie_detector_excerpt/index.html
or http://tinyurl.com/3cbdr74
My previous blog post on the topic.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/07/mri_lie_detecto_1.html
There's a security story from biology I've used a few times: plants that
use chemicals to call in airstrikes by wasps on the herbivores attacking
them. This is a new variation: a species of orchid that emits the same
signals as a trick, to get pollinated.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2008/05/12/orchid-lures-in-pollinating-wasps-with-promise-of-fresh-meat/
or http://tinyurl.com/3r9unrm
I'm a big fan of taxonomies, and this "Taxonomy of Operational Cyber
Security Risks" -- from Carnegie Mellon -- seems like a useful one.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/08/taxonomy_of_ope.html
GPRS hacked.
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/38268/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/10/gprs_cellphone_call_snooping/
http://blogs.computerworld.com/18776/mobile_phone_eavesdropping_made_easy_hackers_crack_gprs_encryption?source=rss_blogs
or http://tinyurl.com/3rafv3k
Security flaws in encrypted police radios: "Why (Special Agent) Johnny
(Still) Can't Encrypt: A Security Analysis of the APCO Project 25
Two-Way Radio System," by Sandy Clark, Travis Goodspeed, Perry Metzger,
Zachary Wasserman, Kevin Xu, and Matt Blaze. I've heard Matt talk about
this project several times. It's great work, and a fascinating insight
into the usability problems of encryption in the real world.
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/p25sec08102011.pdf
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/08/10/security-flaws-in-feds-radios-make-for-easy-eavesdropping/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=
or http://tinyurl.com/3suhkte
Counterfeit pilot IDs and uniforms will now be sufficient to bypass
airport security. TSA is testing a program to not screen pilots.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/08/counterfeit_pil.html
The African crested rat applies tree poison to its fur to make itself
more deadly.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/110803-african-rat-poison-crested-hair-science-proceedings/
or http://tinyurl.com/42q8opk
A couple of weeks ago Wired reported the discovery of a new,
undeletable, web cookie.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/07/undeletable-cookie/
The Wired article was very short on specifics, so I waited until one of
the researchers -- Ashkan Soltani -- wrote up more details. He finally
did, in a quite technical essay.
http://ashkansoltani.org/docs/respawn_redux.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Schneier News
My new book, "Liars and Outliers," has a cover. Publication is still
scheduled for the end of February -- in time for the RSA Conference --
assuming I finish the manuscript in time.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/08/liars_and_outli.html
Older posts on the book:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/05/status_report_t.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/02/societal_securi.html
Interview with me from the Homeland Security News Wire.
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/attackers-have-advantage-cyberspace-says-cybersecurity-expert
or http://tinyurl.com/3jhw73s
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Is There a Hacking Epidemic?
Freakonomics asks: "Why has there been such a spike in hacking recently?
Or is it merely a function of us paying closer attention and of
institutions being more open about reporting security breaches?"
They posted five answers, including mine:
The apparent recent hacking epidemic is more a function of news
reporting than an actual epidemic. Like shark attacks or school
violence, natural fluctuations in data become press epidemics, as
more reporters write about more events, and more people read about
them. Just because the average person reads more articles about
more events doesn't mean that there are more events -- just more
articles.
Hacking for fun -- like LulzSec -- has been around for decades.
It's where hacking started, before criminals discovered the
Internet in the 1990s. Criminal hacking for profit -- like the
Citibank hack -- has been around for over a decade. International
espionage existed for millennia before the Internet, and has never
taken a holiday.
The past several months have brought us a string of newsworthy
hacking incidents. First there was the hacking group Anonymous, and
its hacktivism attacks as a response to the pressure to interdict
contributions to Julian Assange's legal defense fund and the
torture of Bradley Manning. Then there was the probably
espionage-related attack against RSA, Inc. and its authentication
token -- made more newsworthy because of the bungling of the
disclosure by the company -- and the subsequent attack against
Lockheed Martin. And finally, there were the very public attacks
against Sony, which became the company to attack simply because
everyone else was attacking it, and the public hacktivism by
LulzSec.
None of this is new. None of this is unprecedented. To a security
professional, most of it isn't even interesting. And while
national intelligence organizations and some criminal groups are
organized, hacker groups like Anonymous and LulzSec are much more
informal. Despite the impression we get from movies, there is no
organization. There's no membership, there are no dues, there is
no initiation. It's just a bunch of guys. You too can join
Anonymous -- just hack something, and claim you're a member.
That's probably what the members of Anonymous arrested in Turkey
were: 32 people who just decided to use that name.
It's not that things are getting worse; it's that things were
always this bad. To a lot of security professionals, the value of
some of these groups is to graphically illustrate what we've been
saying for years: organizations need to beef up their security
against a wide variety of threats. But the recent news epidemic
also illustrates how safe the Internet is. Because news articles
are the only contact most of us have had with any of these attacks.
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/07/19/why-has-there-been-so-much-hacking-lately-or-is-it-just-reported-more-a-freakonomics-quorum/
or http://tinyurl.com/3jtfcnk
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Since 1998, CRYPTO-GRAM has been a free monthly newsletter providing
summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on security: computer
and otherwise. You can subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your address
on the Web at <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>. Back issues
are also available at that URL.
Please feel free to forward CRYPTO-GRAM, in whole or in part, to
colleagues and friends who will find it valuable. Permission is also
granted to reprint CRYPTO-GRAM, as long as it is reprinted in its entirety.
CRYPTO-GRAM is written by Bruce Schneier. Schneier is the author of the
best sellers "Schneier on Security," "Beyond Fear," "Secrets and Lies,"
and "Applied Cryptography," and an inventor of the Blowfish, Twofish,
Threefish, Helix, Phelix, and Skein algorithms. He is the Chief
Security Technology Officer of BT BCSG, and is on the Board of Directors
of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). He is a frequent
writer and lecturer on security topics. See <http://www.schneier.com>.
Crypto-Gram is a personal newsletter. Opinions expressed are not
necessarily those of BT.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Bruce Schneier.
-
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/16/7387638-man-steals-57k-from-neighbors-using-their-facebook-info?GT1=43001
-
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how-to/software/8-weird-ways-people-are-using-facial-recognition-software?click=pm_news#fbIndex1
8 Weird Ways People Are Using Facial Recognition Software
Read more: 8 Weird Ways People Are Using Facial Recognition Software - Popular Mechanics
-
WASHINGTON — The precedent is novel. More precisely, the precedent is a novel.
In a series of rulings on the use of satellites and cellphones to track criminal suspects, judges around the country have been citing George Orwell’s “1984” to sound an alarm. They say the Fourth Amendment’s promise of protection from government invasion of privacy is in danger of being replaced by the futuristic surveillance state Orwell described.
In April, Judge Diane P. Wood of the federal appeals court in Chicago wrote that surveillance using global positioning system devices would “make the system that George Orwell depicted in his famous novel, ‘1984,’ seem clumsy.” In a similar case last year, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the federal appeals court in San Francisco wrote that “1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last.”
Last month, Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn turned down a government request for 113 days of location data from cellphone towers, citing “Orwellian intrusion” and saying the courts must “begin to address whether revolutionary changes in technology require changes to existing Fourth Amendment doctrine.”
The Supreme Court is about to do just that. In November, it will hear arguments in United States v. Jones, No. 10-1259, the most important Fourth Amendment case in a decade. The justices will address a question that has divided the lower courts: Do the police need a warrant to attach a GPS device to a suspect’s car and track its movements for weeks at a time?
Their answer will bring Fourth Amendment law into the digital age, addressing how its 18th-century prohibition of “unreasonable searches and seizures” applies to a world in which people’s movements are continuously recorded by devices in their cars, pockets and purses, by toll plazas and by transit systems.
The Jones case will address not only whether the placement of a space-age tracking device on the outside of a vehicle without a warrant qualifies as a search, but also whether the intensive monitoring it allows is different in kind from conventional surveillance by police officers who stake out suspects and tail their cars.
“The Jones case requires the Supreme Court to decide whether modern technology has turned law enforcement into Big Brother, able to monitor and record every move we make outside our homes,” said Susan Freiwald, a law professor at the University of San Francisco.
The case is an appeal from a unanimous decision of a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which said last year that the government was simply seeking too much information.
“Repeated visits to a church, a gym, a bar or a bookie tell a story not told by any single visit, as does one’s not visiting any of those places in the course of a month,” wrote Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg.
He added: “A person who knows all of another’s travel can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.”
Federal appeals courts in Chicago and San Francisco, on the other hand, have allowed the police to use GPS tracking devices without a warrant. The police are already allowed to tail cars and observe their movements without warrants, those courts said, and the devices merely allow them to do so more efficiently.
Judge Richard A. Posner, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel in the Chicago case, did caution that institutionalized mass surveillance might present a different issue.
Some judges say that world is fast approaching.
“Technology has progressed to the point where a person who wishes to partake in the social, cultural and political affairs of our society has no realistic choice but to expose to others, if not to the public as a whole, a broad range of conduct and communications that would previously have been deemed unquestionably private,” Magistrate Judge James Orenstein of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn wrote last year.
The case to be heard by the Supreme Court arose from the investigation of the owner of a Washington nightclub, Antoine Jones, who was suspected of being part of a cocaine-selling operation. Apparently out of caution, given the unsettled state of the law, prosecutors obtained a warrant allowing the police to place a tracking device on Mr. Jones’s Jeep Grand Cherokee. The warrant required them to do so within 10 days and within the District of Columbia. The police did not install the device until 11 days later, and they did it in Maryland. Now contending that no warrant was required, the authorities tracked Mr. Jones’s travels for a month and used the evidence they gathered to convict him of conspiring to sell cocaine. He was sentenced to life in prison.
The main Supreme Court precedent in the area, United States v. Knotts, is almost 30 years old. It allowed the use of a much more primitive technology, a beeper that sent a signal that grew stronger as the police drew closer and so helped them follow a car over a single 100-mile trip from Minnesota to Wisconsin.
The Supreme Court ruled that no warrant was required but warned that “twenty-four hour surveillance of any citizen of the country” using “dragnet-type law enforcement practices” may violate the Fourth Amendment.
Much of the argument in the Jones case concerns what that passage meant. Did it indicate discomfort with intense and extended scrutiny of a single suspect’s every move? Or did it apply only to mass surveillance?
In the Jones case, the government argued in a brief to the Supreme Court that the Knotts case disapproved of only “widespread searches or seizures that are conducted without individualized suspicion.”
The brief added: “Law enforcement has not abused GPS technology. No evidence exists of widespread, suspicionless GPS monitoring.” On the other hand, the brief said, requiring a warrant to attach a GPS device to a suspect’s car “would seriously impede the government’s ability to investigate leads and tips on drug trafficking, terrorism and other crimes.”
A decade ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the police needed a warrant to use thermal imaging technology to measure heat emanating from a home. The sanctity of the home is at the core of what the Fourth Amendment protects, Justice Antonin Scalia explained, and the technology was not in widespread use.
In general, though, Justice Scalia observed, “it would be foolish to contend that the degree of privacy secured to citizens by the Fourth Amendment has been entirely unaffected by the advance of technology.”
-
By EMILY STEEL
The Federal Trade Commission wants to give parents more control over what information websites can collect about their children.
The FTC is proposing changes to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act that include requiring parental consent for websites to collect a broader range of information about children under age 13, including location. They also would require parental permission for a website to use tracking software, known as cookies, to build a profile about a child and monitor children's online activities for purposes such as targeting ads.
Journal Community
Question of the Day: Should Congress pass laws requiring parental consent for companies to gather information about children's online activities?
.The move marks a major action by federal regulators to bolster privacy protections for Internet users.
The proposed changes, however, are likely to face stiff opposition from Internet and advertising companies, as new rules would drastically change how they currently operate. Websites currently only have to obtain parental consent when collecting personal information about children such as their name and email address.
The FTC's proposed changes to the decade-old children's privacy rules come amid escalating scrutiny from federal regulators and lawmakers of the fast-growing business of tracking Internet users and selling personal details about their lives such as their online purchases and social-networking activities.
"The Internet revolution makes snapshot photography and wiretap technology look like child's play," FTC Commissioner Julie Brill said during a speech Thursday at the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Ms. Brill said that the level of online tracking is unprecedented, largely undetected by the consumer and raises serious privacy concerns.
As proof that the use of consumer data is wading into dangerous territory, Ms. Brill cited a 2010 story from The Wall Street Journal's "What They Know" series on online privacy issues about a life insurer that used tracking data about consumers to help determine their life expectancy, rates and insurance coverage.
In addition to Thursday's proposed changes, the FTC has been calling for companies to build stronger privacy protections for consumers and be more transparent about information they collect. The commission also has launched investigations of Internet, advertising and mobile companies for deceptive online privacy practices or violating established guidelines.
In the "What They Know" series, the Journal last year reported that popular children's websites install more tracking technologies on personal computers than the top websites aimed at adults.
Internet and advertising industry groups argue that many of the changes are unnecessary.
The Direct Marketing Association disputed the FTC's proposed change that would require parental consent before using tracking cookies because the programs don't always identify children but rather the computer. The trade group said the definition of "personal information" only should include information that could be used to directly contact or communicate with a child.
"We think they may have gone a little too far," said Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president of government affairs for the Direct Marketing Association.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau, which represents more than 500 media and Internet companies, took issue with a proposed change that would require self-regulatory groups to audit their members annually and report the results to the commission. The group said it supports random audits but that yearly audits would create a "dangerous precedent which would impose burdensome and largely unnecessary expenses on the very companies that are proactively taking steps to protect children."
Meanwhile, lawmakers and privacy advocates applauded the commission's proposed updates.
"Given the potential for this sensitive data to be misused to endanger a child, the commission's proposal in this area is a much-needed step," Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass.), said in a statement. Mr. Markey, along with Rep. Joe Barton (R., Tex.), introduced a children's online privacy bill earlier this year to update existing rules and would extend privacy safeguards to teenagers. The bill now is in committee. "Strong legal requirements along with vigilant enforcement are needed to protect children from tracking and targeting on the Internet," Mr. Markey said.
The FTC is soliciting comments on its proposed changes until Nov. 28. The commission last reviewed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in 2005, without making changes.
Write to Emily Steel at emily.steel@wsj.com
-
"Over 30,000 British schoolchildren, some as young as three, have had their names registered on a government database and branded “racist” or “homophobic” for using playground insults, infractions that could impact their future careers.
The shocking figures were disclosed after civil liberties group the Manifesto Club made a Freedom of Information Act request which betrayed the fact that kids who used petty jibes are now being treated as thought criminals by education authorities.
34,000 incidents of “racism” in total were reported for the year 2009-2010, with nursery school toddlers as young as three being put on a state database for using the words “gay” and “lesbian”. One child who called another “broccoli head” was also reported to authorities. Other cases included a child who used the word “gaylord,” while another who told a teacher “this work is gay,” was also added to the thought crime database. "
- http://www.infowars.com/3-year-olds-branded-racist-homophobic-put-in-government-database/
-
"Over 30,000 British schoolchildren, some as young as three, have had their names registered on a government database and branded “racist” or “homophobic” for using playground insults, infractions that could impact their future careers.
The shocking figures were disclosed after civil liberties group the Manifesto Club made a Freedom of Information Act request which betrayed the fact that kids who used petty jibes are now being treated as thought criminals by education authorities.
34,000 incidents of “racism” in total were reported for the year 2009-2010, with nursery school toddlers as young as three being put on a state database for using the words “gay” and “lesbian”. One child who called another “broccoli head” was also reported to authorities. Other cases included a child who used the word “gaylord,” while another who told a teacher “this work is gay,” was also added to the thought crime database. "
- http://www.infowars.com/3-year-olds-branded-racist-homophobic-put-in-government-database/
Yes, this isn't a good thing at all, but infowars rots the brain. There are better sources out there.
-
Yes, this isn't a good thing at all, but infowars rots the brain. There are better sources out there.
I don't know anything about infowars. I just heard about this on Savage last night and thought some folks might enjoy it.
The bully thing is weird to me. If they really want to help kids that are bullied, they should educate the parents to move, home school their kids, help the kids learn it gets better when they grow up, or see if it is possible to whip the kid into fighting shape or something so he can defend himself. Yelling at bullies isn't going to change their nature.
Who knows. Maybe the psychologists know what they are doing? (;
-
Yes, this isn't a good thing at all, but infowars rots the brain. There are better sources out there.
I don't know anything about infowars. I just heard about this on Savage last night and thought some folks might enjoy it.
The bully thing is weird to me. If they really want to help kids that are bullied, they should educate the parents to move, home school their kids, help the kids learn it gets better when they grow up, or see if it is possible to whip the kid into fighting shape or something so he can defend himself. Yelling at bullies isn't going to change their nature.
Who knows. Maybe the psychologists know what they are doing? (;
Addressing bullying is important, but placing children in a thoughcrimes database isn't the way to go about it.
-
IMO (Notice the distinction from IMHO please) Infowars.com is a seriously dubious site that occasionally raises something interesting. Any time it is cited around here, I'd appreciate a notation to that effect.
Continuing with the conversation:
As best as I can tell, the gay forces have seized on the term "bullying" because many gay kids get bullied. Naturally as a result of their gayness, they seek solution in neuterization-- as some dead French guy said, "the idea of virtue consisting of the absence of clause" or something like that.
A more Taoist approach would see that Bullying is but one half of the totality, the other being Wimpiness-- the emasculinization of the manly energy in our culture IS Wimpiness-- and the Progressive-PC-liberal-left-socialist solution is to solve it by further emasculinization! Its like solving a debt crisis by deficit spending!!!
In my humble opinion it would make more sense to offer physical education classes in martial arts and self-defense. Strength and Honor is the solution to the Bully.
-
IMO (Notice the distinction from IMHO please) Infowars.com is a seriously dubious site that occasionally raises something interesting. Any time it is cited around here, I'd appreciate a notation to that effect.
Continuing with the conversation:
As best as I can tell, the gay forces have seized on the term "bullying" because many gay kids get bullied. Naturally as a result of their gayness, they seek solution in neuterization-- as some dead French guy said, "the idea of virtue consisting of the absence of clause" or something like that.
A more Taoist approach would see that Bullying is but one half of the totality, the other being Wimpiness-- the emasculinization of the manly energy in our culture IS Wimpiness-- and the Progressive-PC-liberal-left-socialist solution is to solve it by further emasculinization! Its like solving a debt crisis by deficit spending!!!
In my humble opinion it would make more sense to offer physical education classes in martial arts and self-defense. Strength and Honor is the solution to the Bully.
I'd agree to a certain extent, however I don't want to see the school culture turn into that found within "gladiator academies". Yes, the culture of wimpiness the left wants to cultivate is a problem, but we don't want to raise kids exactly like the spartans did, do we?
-
When I was in jr. high school I got in a fight with this kid that lived by my grand mother after he knocked the books out of my hand. Neither of us got hurt and too many people came so we had to stop. Anyway, after it was over I got confronted by the biggest bully in the school. He was bigger than everyone else and had a black belt in some kind of karate. I had actually seen him stomp kick a high school kid through his car door. "You like to fight? I didn't know you liked to fight." He had a cast. "When my cast comes off you and I are going to fight."
Anyway, two weeks later, after talking shit all week about how he was going to kick my ass, he beats up some other kid and never looks at me again. So I never had to fight the guy. He beat up a lot of kids.
If they offered karate and self defense at high school, just like wrestling, I'm pretty sure it would only be the most fit kids that would get any benefit out of it. You would just make the bullies stronger because it isn't like the education staff has any authority or capacity to help the right kids.
I like the idea of kids that get bullied going to home school, getting some classes in confidence building / social skills, being sent to karate, and then going back to a new school, or maybe even their old one. I don't like the idea of just teaching big groups of kids how to fight better.
-
Well, certainly I'm not advocating the school yard become a Darwinian cagefighting pit, I'm thinking more like a good BJJ class. EVERY ONE has to tap in BJJ sometimes and it seems to me a good way to channel and ritualize energies that will make themselves felt in one way or another. It offers a vehicle for the not naturally tough to toughen up.
-
"In my humble opinion it would make more sense to offer physical education classes in martial arts and self-defense. Strength and Honor is the solution to the Bully."
"You would just make the bullies stronger"
Both seem like good points. I guess the question is moot anyway as I could not see martial arts being allowed in public schools for two reasons:
not politically correct
liability issues
That suggested, I am no expert in martial arts but did have past exposure with a few different instructors. It seems like the ethical? ones IMveryHO would teach martial arts more to avoid conflict and too use physical means only as last resort.
"If they really want to help kids that are bullied, they should educate the parents to move, home school their kids, help the kids learn it gets better when they grow up, or see if it is possible to whip the kid into fighting shape or something so he can defend himself. Yelling at bullies isn't going to change their nature."
I guess every case is unique in it's own way. I would rather the bully get the penalty. If discipline at school doesn't work, then get the law involved (assualt or and battery).
If the bullying is so bad (like with gangs) then yea I guess getting the heck out of the area is best or the only means of really doing anything.
The "karate kid" thing is just a movie anyway.
-
FWIW my sense of things is that the world "bully" has become a blunderbuss to bludgeon far too much of the banter and social battering that is part of growing up. As far as making bullies stronger, IMHO more often we would be giving a place for the naturally competitve and naturally aggressive to channel their energies.
-
FWIW my sense of things is that the world "bully" has become a blunderbuss to bludgeon far too much of the banter and social battering that is part of growing up. As far as making bullies stronger, IMHO more often we would be giving a place for the naturally competitve and naturally aggressive to channel their energies.
I think we should encourage competitive and aggressive behavior (as opposed to the modern trend of soccer games where no score is kept because someone's widdle feelings might be hurt), but be sure to teach lessons about when and where it is ok to be aggressive and even violent, and when it isn't.
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/onstar-announces-tracking-continues-even-after-cancellation/
-
By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES
For more than a year, federal authorities pursued a man they called simply "the Hacker." Only after using a little known cellphone-tracking device—a stingray—were they able to zero in on a California home and make the arrest.
A Harris StingRay II, one of several devices dubbed 'stingrays.'
Stingrays are designed to locate a mobile phone even when it's not being used to make a call. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers the devices to be so critical that it has a policy of deleting the data gathered in their use, mainly to keep suspects in the dark about their capabilities, an FBI official told The Wall Street Journal in response to inquiries.
A stingray's role in nabbing the alleged "Hacker"—Daniel David Rigmaiden—is shaping up as a possible test of the legal standards for using these devices in investigations. The FBI says it obtains appropriate court approval to use the device.
Stingrays are one of several new technologies used by law enforcement to track people's locations, often without a search warrant. These techniques are driving a constitutional debate about whether the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but which was written before the digital age, is keeping pace with the times.
On Nov. 8, the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether or not police need a warrant before secretly installing a GPS device on a suspect's car and tracking him for an extended period. In both the Senate and House, new bills would require a warrant before tracking a cellphone's location.
More
Key Documents in 'Stingray' Case
Digits: How 'Stingray' Devices Work
Digits: How Technology Is Testing the Fourth Amendment
.<div class="noFlash">
{if djIsFlashPossible}
<p>The version of Adobe Flash Player required to view this interactive has not been found. To enjoy our complete interactive experience, please download a free copy of the latest version of Adobe Flash Player here (http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash)</p>
{else}
<p>This content can not be displayed because your browser does not support the Adobe Flash player required to view it.</p>
{/if}
</div>
.And on Thursday in U.S. District Court of Arizona, Judge David G. Campbell is set to hear a request by Mr. Rigmaiden, who is facing fraud charges, to have information about the government's secret techniques disclosed to him so he can use it in his defense. Mr. Rigmaiden maintains his innocence and says that using stingrays to locate devices in homes without a valid warrant "disregards the United States Constitution" and is illegal.
His argument has caught the judge's attention. In a February hearing, according to a transcript, Judge Campbell asked the prosecutor, "Were there warrants obtained in connection with the use of this device?"
The prosecutor, Frederick A. Battista, said the government obtained a "court order that satisfied [the] language" in the federal law on warrants. The judge then asked how an order or warrant could have been obtained without telling the judge what technology was being used. Mr. Battista said: "It was a standard practice, your honor."
Judge Campbell responded that it "can be litigated whether those orders were appropriate."
On Thursday the government will argue it should be able to withhold details about the tool used to locate Mr. Rigmaiden, according to documents filed by the prosecution. In a statement to the Journal, Sherry Sabol, Chief of the Science & Technology Office for the FBI's Office of General Counsel, says that information about stingrays and related technology is "considered Law Enforcement Sensitive, since its public release could harm law enforcement efforts by compromising future use of the equipment."
Enlarge Image
Close.The prosecutor, Mr. Battista, told the judge that the government worries that disclosure would make the gear "subject to being defeated or avoided or detected."
A stingray works by mimicking a cellphone tower, getting a phone to connect to it and measuring signals from the phone. It lets the stingray operator "ping," or send a signal to, a phone and locate it as long as it is powered on, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. The device has various uses, including helping police locate suspects and aiding search-and-rescue teams in finding people lost in remote areas or buried in rubble after an accident.
The government says "stingray" is a generic term. In Mr. Rigmaiden's case it remains unclear which device or devices were actually used.
The best known stingray maker is Florida-based defense contractor Harris Corp. A spokesman for Harris declined to comment.
Harris holds trademarks registered between 2002 and 2008 on several devices, including the StingRay, StingRay II, AmberJack, KingFish, TriggerFish and LoggerHead. Similar devices are available from other manufacturers. According to a Harris document, its devices are sold only to law-enforcement and government agencies.
Some of the gadgets look surprisingly old-fashioned, with a smattering of switches and lights scattered across a panel roughly the size of a shoebox, according to photos of a Harris-made StingRay reviewed by the Journal. The devices can be carried by hand or mounted in cars, allowing investigators to move around quickly.
A rare public reference to this type of technology appeared this summer in the television crime drama "The Closer." In the episode, law-enforcement officers use a gadget they called a "catfish" to track cellphones without a court order.
The U.S. armed forces also use stingrays or similar devices, according to public contract notices. Local law enforcement in Minnesota, Arizona, Miami and Durham, N.C., also either possess the devices or have considered buying them, according to interviews and published requests for funding.
The sheriff's department in Maricopa County, Ariz., uses the equipment "about on a monthly basis," says Sgt. Jesse Spurgin. "This is for location only. We can't listen in on conversations," he says.
Sgt. Spurgin says officers often obtain court orders, but not necessarily search warrants, when using the device. To obtain a search warrant from a court, officers as a rule need to show "probable cause," which is generally defined as a reasonable belief, based on factual evidence, that a crime was committed. Lesser standards apply to other court orders.
A spokeswoman with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minnesota says officers don't need to seek search warrants in that state to use a mobile tracking device because it "does not intercept communication, so no wiretap laws would apply."
FBI and Department of Justice officials have also said that investigators don't need search warrants. Associate Deputy Attorney General James A. Baker and FBI General Counsel Valerie E. Caproni both said at a panel at the Brookings Institution in May that devices like these fall into a category of tools called "pen registers," which require a lesser order than a warrant. Pen registers gather signals from phones, such as phone numbers dialed, but don't receive the content of the communications.
To get a pen-register order, investigators don't have to show probable cause. The Supreme Court has ruled that use of a pen register doesn't require a search warrant because it doesn't involve interception of conversations.
But with cellphones, data sent includes location information, making the situation more complicated because some judges have found that location information is more intrusive than details about phone numbers dialed. Some courts have required a slightly higher standard for location information, but not a warrant, while others have held that a search warrant is necessary.
The prosecution in the Rigmaiden case says in court documents that the "decisions are made on a case-by-case basis" by magistrate and district judges. Court records in other cases indicate that decisions are mixed, and cases are only now moving through appellate courts.
The FBI advises agents to work with federal prosecutors locally to meet the requirements of their particular district or judge, the FBI's Ms. Sabol says. She also says it is FBI policy to obtain a search warrant if the FBI believes the technology "may provide information on an individual while that person is in a location where he or she would have a reasonable expectation of privacy."
Experts say lawmakers and the courts haven't yet settled under what circumstances locating a person or device constitutes a search requiring a warrant. Tracking people when they are home is particularly sensitive because the Fourth Amendment specifies that people have a right to be secure against unreasonable searches in their "houses."
"The law is uncertain," says Orin Kerr, a professor at George Washington University Law School and former computer-crime attorney at the Department of Justice. Mr. Kerr, who has argued that warrants should be required for some, but not all, types of location data, says that the legality "should depend on the technology."
In the case of Mr. Rigmaiden, the government alleges that as early as 2005, he began filing fraudulent tax returns online. Overall, investigators say, Mr. Rigmaiden electronically filed more than 1,900 fraudulent tax returns as part of a $4 million plot.
Federal investigators say they pursued Mr. Rigmaiden "through a virtual labyrinth of twists and turns." Eventually, they say they linked Mr. Rigmaiden to use of a mobile-broadband card, a device that lets a computer connect to the Internet through a cellphone network.
Investigators obtained court orders to track the broadband card. Both orders remain sealed, but portions of them have been quoted by the defense and the prosecution.
These two documents are central to the clash in the Arizona courtroom. One authorizes a "pen register" and clearly isn't a search warrant. The other document is more complex. The prosecution says it is a type of search warrant and that a finding of probable cause was made.
But the defense argues that it can't be a proper search warrant, because among other things it allowed investigators to delete all the tracking data collected, rather than reporting back to the judge.
Legal experts who spoke with the Journal say it is difficult to evaluate the order, since it remains sealed. In general, for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, the finding of probable cause is most important in determining whether a search is reasonable because that requirement is specified in the Constitution itself, rather than in legal statutes, says Mr. Kerr.
But it is "odd" for a search warrant to allow deletion of evidence before a case goes to trial, says Paul Ohm, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School and a former computer-crime attorney at the Department of Justice. The law governing search warrants specifies how the warrants are to be executed and generally requires information to be returned to the judge.
Even if the court finds the government's actions acceptable under the Fourth Amendment, deleting the data is "still something we might not want the FBI doing," Mr. Ohm says.
The government says the data from the use of the stingray has been deleted and isn't available to the defendant. In a statement, the FBI told the Journal that "our policy since the 1990s has been to purge or 'expunge' all information obtained during a location operation" when using stingray-type gear.
As a general matter, Ms. Sabol says, court orders related to stingray technology "will include a directive to expunge information at the end of the location operation."
Ms. Sabol says the FBI follows this policy because its intent isn't to use the data as evidence in court, but rather to simply find the "general location of their subject" in order to start collecting other information that can be used to justify a physical search of the premises.
In the Rigmaiden example, investigators used the stingray to narrow down the location of the broadband card. Then they went to the apartment complex's office and learned that one resident had used a false ID and a fake tax return on the renter's application, according to court documents.
Based on that evidence, they obtained a search warrant for the apartment. They found the broadband card connected to a computer.
Mr. Rigmaiden, who doesn't confirm or deny ownership of the broadband card, is arguing he should be given information about the device and about other aspects of the mission that located him.
In the February hearing, Judge Campbell said he might need to weigh the government's claim of privilege against the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights, and asked the prosecution, "How can we litigate in this case whether this technology that was used in this case violates the Fourth Amendment without knowing precisely what it can do?"
Write to Jennifer Valentino-DeVries at Jennifer.Valentino-DeVries@wsj.com
-
A bit paranoid, but some interesting points
http://goldsilver.com/video/smart-meters/
-
CRYPTO-GRAM
October 15, 2011
by Bruce Schneier
Chief Security Technology Officer, BT
schneier@schneier.com
http://www.schneier.com
A free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on security: computer and otherwise.
For back issues, or to subscribe, visit <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>.
You can read this issue on the web at
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1110.html>. These same essays and news items appear in the "Schneier on Security" blog at <http://www.schneier.com/blog>, along with a lively comment section. An RSS feed is available.
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
In this issue:
Three Emerging Cyber Threats
Status Report: Liars and Outliers
News
Official Malware from the German Police
Domain-in-the-Middle Attacks
Schneier News
Insider Attack Against Diebold Voting Machines
National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Three Emerging Cyber Threats
Last month, I participated in a panel at the Information Systems Forum in Berlin. The moderator asked us what the top three emerging threats
were in cyberspace. I went last, and decided to focus on the top three
threats that are not criminal:
* The Rise of Big Data. By this I mean industries that trade on our data. These include traditional credit bureaus and data brokers, but also data-collection companies like Facebook and Google. They're collecting more and more data about everyone, often without their knowledge and explicit consent, and selling it far and wide: to both other corporate users and to government. Big data is becoming a powerful industry, resisting any calls to regulate its behavior.
* Ill-Conceived Regulations from Law Enforcement. We're seeing increasing calls to regulate cyberspace in the mistaken belief that this will fight crime. I'm thinking about data retention laws, Internet kill switches, and calls to eliminate anonymity. None of these will work, and they'll all make us less safe.
* The Cyberwar Arms Race. I'm not worried about cyberwar, but I am worried about the proliferation of cyber weapons. Arms races are fundamentally destabilizing, especially when their development can be so easily hidden. I worry about cyberweapons being triggered by accident, cyberweapons getting into the wrong hands and being triggered on purpose, and the inability to reliably trace a cyberweapon leading to increased distrust. Plus, arms races are expensive.
That's my list, and they all have the potential to be more dangerous than cybercriminals.
Big data:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1926431
Internet kill switches:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-224.html
Calls to eliminate anonymity:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/02/anonymity_and_t_3.html
Cyberwar:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/12/cyberwar_and_th.html
-
By STEVE STECKLOW, FARNAZ FASSIHI and LORETTA CHAO
When Western companies pulled back from Iran after the government's bloody crackdown on its citizens two years ago, a Chinese telecom giant filled the vacuum.
Huawei Technologies Co. now dominates Iran's government-controlled mobile-phone industry. In doing so, it plays a role in enabling Iran's state security network.
Huawei recently signed a contract to install equipment for a system at Iran's largest mobile-phone operator that allows police to track people based on the locations of their cellphones, according to interviews with telecom employees both in Iran and abroad, and corporate bidding documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It also has provided support for similar services at Iran's second-largest mobile-phone provider. Huawei notes that nearly all countries require police access to cell networks, including the U.S.
Huawei's role in Iran demonstrates the ease with which countries can obtain foreign technology that can be used to stifle dissent through censorship or surveillance. Many of the technologies Huawei supports in Iran—such as location services—are available on Western networks as well. The difference is that, in the hands of repressive regimes, it can be a critical tool in helping to quash dissent.
See a screenshot of an article about Huawei reprinted on the website of the Chinese embassy in Tehran. It first appeared in August 2009, two months after mass demonstrations erupted in Iran. The article notes that Huawei's clients include "military industries."
Last year, Egyptian state security intercepted conversations among pro-democracy activists over Skype using a system provided by a British company. In Libya, agents working for Moammar Gadhafi spied on emails and chat messages using technology from a French firm. Unlike in Egypt and Libya, where the governments this year were overthrown, Iran's sophisticated spying network remains intact.
In Iran, three student activists described in interviews being arrested shortly after turning on their phones. Iran's government didn't respond to requests for comment.
Iran beefed up surveillance of its citizens after a controversial 2009 election spawned the nation's broadest antigovernment uprising in decades. Authorities launched a major crackdown on personal freedom and dissent. More than 6,000 people have been arrested and hundreds remain in jail, according to Iranian human-rights organizations.
Enlarge Image
Close.This year Huawei made a pitch to Iranian government officials to sell equipment for a mobile news service on Iran's second-largest mobile-phone operator, MTN Irancell. According to a person who attended the meeting, Huawei representatives emphasized that, being from China, they had expertise censoring the news.
The company won the contract and the operator rolled out the service, according to this person. MTN Irancell made no reference to censorship in its announcement about its "mobile newspaper" service. But Iran routinely censors the Internet using sophisticated filtering technology. The Journal reported in June that Iran was planning to create its own domestic Internet to combat Western ideas, culture and influence.
In winning Iranian contracts, Huawei has sometimes partnered with Zaeim Electronic Industries Co., an Iranian electronics firm whose website says its clients include the intelligence and defense ministries, as well as the country's elite special-forces unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. This month the U.S. accused a branch of the Revolutionary Guards of plotting to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. Iran denies the claim.
Huawei's chief spokesman, Ross Gan, said, "It is our corporate commitment to comply strictly with all U.N. economic sanctions, Chinese regulations and applicable national regulations on export control. We believe our business operations in Iran fully meet all of these relevant regulations."
William Plummer, Huawei's vice president of external affairs in Washington, said the company's location-based-service offerings comply with "global specifications" that require lawful-interception capabilities. "What we're doing in Iran is the same as what we're doing in any market," he said. "Our goal is to enrich people's lives through communications."
.Firms Aided Libyan Spies
8/30/2011
Cisco Poised to Help China Keep an Eye on Its Citizens
7/5/2011
Iran Vows to Unplug Internet
5/28/2011
U.S. Products Help Block Mideast Web
3/28/2011
Full Coverage: Wsj.com/censorship
.Huawei has about 1,000 employees in Iran, according to people familiar with its Iran operations. In an interview in China, a Huawei executive played down the company's activities in Iran's mobile-phone industry, saying its technicians only service Huawei equipment, primarily routers.
But a person familiar with Huawei's Mideast operations says the company's role is considerably greater, and includes a contract for "managed services"—overseeing parts of the network—at MTN Irancell, which is majority owned by the government. During 2009's demonstrations, this person said, Huawei carried out government orders on behalf of its client, MTN Irancell, that MTN and other carriers had received to suspend text messaging and block the Internet phone service, Skype, which is popular among dissidents. Huawei's Mr. Plummer disputed that the company blocked such services.
Huawei, one of the world's top makers of telecom equipment, has been trying to expand in the U.S. It has met resistance because of concerns it could be tied to the Chinese government and military, which the company denies.
Last month the U.S. Commerce Department barred Huawei from participating in the development of a national wireless emergency network for police, fire and medical personnel because of "national security concerns." A Commerce Department official declined to elaborate.
Enlarge Image
CloseBloomberg News
Building F1, home to the exhibition hall, stands at the Huawei Technologies Co. campus in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China, on Thursday, May 19, 2011.
.In February, Huawei withdrew its attempt to win U.S. approval for acquiring assets and server technology from 3Leaf Systems Inc. of California, citing opposition by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The panel reviews U.S. acquisitions by foreign companies that may have national-security implications. Last year, Sprint Nextel Corp. excluded Huawei from a multibillion-dollar contract because of national-security concerns in Washington, according to people familiar with the matter.
Huawei has operated in Iran's telecommunications industry since 1999, according to China's embassy in Tehran. Prior to Iran's political unrest in 2009, Huawei was already a major supplier to Iran's mobile-phone networks, along with Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture between Nokia Corp. and Siemens AG, according to MTN Irancell documents.
Iran's telecom market, which generated an estimated $9.1 billion in revenue last year, has been growing significantly, especially its mobile-phone business. As of last year, Iran had about 66 million mobile-phone subscribers covering about 70% of the population, according to Pyramid Research in Cambridge, Mass. In contrast, about 36% of Iranians had fixed-line phones.
As a result, mobile phones provide Iran's police network with far more opportunity for monitoring and tracking people. Iranian human-rights organizations outside Iran say there are dozens of documented cases in which dissidents were traced and arrested through the government's ability to track the location of their cellphones.
Many dissidents in Iran believe they are being tracked by their cellphones. Abbas Hakimzadeh, a 27-year-old student activist on a committee that published an article questioning the actions of Iran's president, said he expected to be arrested in late 2009 after several of his friends were jailed. Worried he could be tracked by his mobile phone, he says he turned it off, removed the battery and left Tehran to hide at his father's house in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
A month later, he turned his cellphone back on. Within 24 hours, he says, authorities arrested him at his father's house. "The interrogators were holding my phone records, SMS and emails," he said.
He eventually was released and later fled to Turkey where he is seeking asylum. In interviews with the Journal, two other student activists who were arrested said they also believe authorities found them in hiding via the location of their cellphones.
In early 2009, Siemens disclosed that its joint venture with Nokia, NSN, had provided Iran's largest telecom, government-owned Telecommunications Company of Iran, with a monitoring center capable of intercepting and recording voice calls on its mobile networks. It wasn't capable of location tracking. NSN also had provided network equipment to TCI's mobile-phone operator, as well as MTN Irancell, that permitted interception. Like most countries, Iran requires phone networks to allow police to monitor conversations for crime prevention.
NSN sold its global monitoring-center business in March 2009. The company says it hasn't sought new business in Iran and has established a human-rights policy to reduce the potential for abuse of its products.
A spokesman for Ericsson said it delivered "standard" equipment to Iranian telecom companies until 2008, which included built-in lawful-interception capabilities. "Products can be used in a way that was not the intention of the manufacturer," the spokesman said. He said Ericsson began decreasing its business in Iran as a result of the 2009 political upheaval and now doesn't seek any new contracts.
As NSN and Ericsson pulled back, Huawei's business grew. In August 2009, two months after mass protests began, the website of China's embassy in Tehran reprinted a local article under the headline, "Huawei Plans Takeover of Iran's Telecom Market." The article said the company "has gained the trust and alliance of major governmental and private entities within a short period," and that its clients included "military industries."
The same month the Chinese embassy posted the article, Creativity Software, a British company that specializes in "location-based services," announced it had won a contract to supply a system to MTN Irancell. "Creativity Software has worked in partnership with Huawei, where they will provide first and second level support to the operator," the company said.
The announcement said the system would enable "Home Zone Billing"—which encourages people to use their cellphones at home (and give up their land lines) by offering low rates—as well as other consumer and business applications that track user locations. In a description of the service, Creativity Software says its technology also enables mobile-phone operators to "comply with lawful-intercept government legislation," which gives police access to communications and location information.
A former telecommunications engineer at MTN Irancell said the company grew more interested in location-based services during the antigovernment protests. He said a team from the government's telecom-monitoring center routinely visited the operator to verify the government had access to people's location data. The engineer said location tracking has expanded greatly since the system first was installed.
An official with Creativity Software confirmed that MTN Irancell is a customer and said the company couldn't comment because of "contractual confidentiality."
A spokesman for MTN Group Ltd., a South African company that owns 49% of the Iranian operator, declined to answer questions, writing in an email, "The majority of MTN Irancell is owned by the government of Iran." He referred questions to the telecommunications regulator, which didn't respond.
In 2008, the Iranian government began soliciting bids for location-based services for the largest mobile operator, TCI's Mobile Communication Co. of Iran, or MCCI. A copy of the bidding requirements, reviewed by the Journal, says the contractor "shall support and deliver offline and real-time lawful interception." It also states that for "public security," the service must allow "tracking a specified phone/subscriber on map."
Ericsson participated in the early stages of the bidding process, a spokesman said. Internal company documents reviewed by the Journal show Ericsson was partnering with an Estonian company, Reach-U, to provide a "security solution" that included "Monitor Security—application for security agencies for locating and tracking suspects."
The Ericsson spokesman says its offering didn't meet the operator's requirements so it dropped out. An executive with Reach-U said, "Yes, we made an offer but this ended nowhere."
One of the ultimate winners: Huawei. According to a Huawei manager in Tehran, the company signed a contract this year to provide equipment for location-based services to MCCI in the south of Iran and is now ramping up hiring for the project.
One local Iranian company Huawei has done considerable business with is Zaeim Electronic Industries. "Zaeim is the security and intelligence wing of every telecom bid," said an engineer who worked on several projects with Zaeim inside the telecom ministry. Internal Ericsson records show that Zaeim was handling the "security part" of the lawful-interception capabilities of the location-based services contract for MCCI.
On its Persian-language website, Zaeim says it launched its telecommunications division in 2000 in partnership with Huawei, and that they have completed 46 telecommunications projects together. It says they now are working on the country's largest fiber-optic transfer network for Iran's telecom ministry, which will enable simultaneous data, voice and video services.
Zaeim's website lists clients including major government branches such as the ministries of intelligence and defense. Also listed are the Revolutionary Guard and the president's office.
Mr. Gan, the Huawei spokesman, said: "We provide Zaeim with commercial public use products and services." Zaeim didn't respond to requests for comment.
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576651503577823210.html#ixzz1c0UPXuMc
-
DALLAS—Drones, the remote-controlled aircraft used in combat zones, are now hovering over some U.S. cities as police enlist them to get a bird's-eye view of crime scenes and accidents at relatively low expense.
But as financially strapped municipalities add drones to their crime-fighting arsenal, they are facing increasing questions about the vehicles' safety, as well as their potential to violate citizens' privacy.
Law-enforcement officials say the unmanned aircraft help avoid putting police in the line of fire, either by performing surveillance close to the ground, like a live officer, or by monitoring from high up, removing pilots from potential danger. Earlier this year, a police helicopter in Los Angeles had to make an emergency landing after it was shot at by a gunman.
Drones are also considerably cheaper than regular aircraft. Officials in Montgomery County, near Houston, Texas, estimate it costs $30 an hour to operate a drone, compared with a minimum of $500 an hour for a helicopter. The purchase price of a drone is typically less than that of a chopper or plane, too.
Airborne Enforcer
How one drone shapes up
Department: Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, Texas
Model: Shadowhawk
Cost:$300,000
Manufacturer: Vanguard Defense Industries LLC
Altitude limit: 8,000 feet
Weight: About 50 pounds
Features: Infrared camera that can detect the heat emitted by a person below
Source: Vanguard Defense Industries LLC, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office .That math was attractive to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, which recently used a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to purchase a $300,000 drone called the Shadowhawk, made by Vanguard Defense Industries LLC, of Conroe, Texas. It comes equipped with an infrared camera that can detect the heat emitted by a person below. In addition to crime-fighting assistance, officials say, that will help track lost hikers in a nearby national forest.
"We certainly do not have the funds to go out and purchase our own helicopter," said Randy McDaniel, the office's chief deputy.
Most departments say the small craft aren't suitable for high-speed chases of suspects. But police are finding they can help with other duties, including monitoring crowds at parades, performing reconnaissance ahead of raids and helping ground officers respond more quickly to accidents such as highway pileups and hazardous-material spills.
Because of increasing demand for small unmanned aircraft, the Federal Aviation Administration is devising new rules to regulate their flight. A proposal is expected in January.
The FAA grants permits to operate drones on a case-by-case basis, depending on their planned use. As of September, there were 285 active permits requested by 85 government groups, including public universities, federal law-enforcement agencies and police departments.
However, some airplane pilots complain that the rules set by those individual permits are largely unknown to the rest of the flying public. Heidi Williams, of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, said that drones should be subject to a set of standard rules, just like manned aircraft.
"There has to be some way for them to integrate safely into the airspace system," she said.
Though drones have been used by the military for decades, they are still relatively new in law enforcement on U.S. soil. The models used by police are smaller and unarmed, weigh less than 55 pounds and are maneuvered from the ground through a computer or a joystick. Their range varies from a few hundred to several thousand feet in altitude, and their price from $5,000 for in-house-fabricated models to several hundred thousand dollars.
Vanguard Defense, the company that made the Montgomery County drone, markets its law-enforcement units through in-person presentations and at industry trade shows such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference, said Michael S. Buscher, the company's chief executive.
Civil-rights advocates worry the technology could be used to pry into citizens' lives.
"There's a question about the degree to which Americans are going to be able to preserve the privacy of movement that we've all enjoyed," said Catherine Crump, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.
In response to such concerns, some agencies are setting guidelines that allow the flight of drones only for specific missions, rather than random air patrols.
Andrew Cohen, a sergeant with the Miami-Dade Police Department, said its two units were reserved for emergencies, and hadn't been deployed a single time since the agency got a flying permit for them six months ago.
Another challenge for police is changing the drone's public image.
"We are purposely not calling these drones. When people hear the word 'drone' they automatically think of the huge military-type aircraft equipped with weapons," said Lt. Chad Gann of the Arlington police department.
He prefers the term "small unmanned aircraft" to describe the two units his department is buying. Mr. Gann said they will help jump-start fatal-crash investigations by arriving to the scene sooner and taking aerial pictures, saving money and officers' time.
In Columbia, S.C., police planning a raid on a house where an armed man had barricaded himself used a small drone to get details of the property, such as the direction in which the door opened, said Ruben Santiago, deputy chief of operations. "It cut down on the time it would take for us to do the necessary surveillance," he said.
Mr. Cohen, at the Miami-Dade Police Department, said that whenever the drones make their debut, residents don't have to worry about the aircraft sneaking up on them, because they sound like flying lawn mowers.
"It's not stealth technology at all," he said. (That may change though, yes?)
-
"It's not stealth technology at all," he said. (That may change though, yes?)
So?
-
C'mon GM, you already know the answer to that. The technological trajectory is towards the capability to have Big Brother watching all the time everywhere. That may fit your idea of a free people in a free society, but it does not fit mine. You already know this.
-
Law enforcement having aircraft is new?
-
The technology in short order will produce zillions of flying surveillance robots, too small or too far away to be seen or heard.
Please feel free to break out of your self-sustaining feedback loop on this one , , ,
-
:roll:
Uhuh. Yeah, the police departments that are cancelling academies, laying off officers, closing specialized units just to put bodies into uniforms to catch calls are going to have legions of remote aircraft watching everything.
Totally realistic concern.
-
Ummm , , , I see, , , our American Creed and the Freedom with which we live is to be dependent on the government not deciding to spend/print money on this stuff-- stuff which, like all technology, rapidly decreases in cost? , , , You know that bill we are discussing on another thread with the troubling language that Congress is working on rather secretly to have American citizens indefinitely detained by US military?
This is the proper time, use, and place for drones:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/intense-footage-shows-taliban-insurgents-destroyed-in-bombings/
Not as SOP for daily life in America.
-
Human beings don't decrease in cost. A UAV might be cheaper than a conventional aircraft, but it still has to be flown by a trained pilot and maintained by trained personnel. Anything that has the potential to crash or cause any sort of injury/death has a huge legal price tag attached to it.
How many SoCal law enforcement agencies that used to have aviation programs have gutted them or shut them down completely?
-
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/jsp_includes/articlePrint.jsp?headLine=UAVs, or Nothing Can Go Wrong, Go Wrong. . .&storyID=news/bca0108p2.xml
UAVs, or Nothing Can Go Wrong, Go Wrong. . .
By George C. Larson
Before most people noticed, the idea of employing aircraft in the national airspace without pilots aboard them -- unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs (and sometimes UAS, where the S is for "systems") -- has gotten to a point where their introduction is considered inevitable. Who'd have thought? After all, these machines were originally developed to conduct military missions in areas deemed too hazardous for humans, not for ordinary flying tasks. Advocates like to say UAVs are best at "3-D missions" -- those that are dull, dirty or dangerous.
Now there's palpable pressure from UAV advocates to insert the aircraft into an array of civilian missions as well. And there are two leading arguments for their use: long endurance and low cost.
It's true that replacing the weight of a pilot with an equal amount of fuel confers on the UAV a higher fuel fraction in its design gross weight, which is where the endurance comes from. A solar-powered Zephyr UAV stayed aloft for 54 hours, setting a record in 2006, and the turbofan-powered Northrop Global Hawk operated by the U.S. Air Force has a claimed 42-hour endurance. No current production human-piloted aircraft can match numbers like those, although Burt Rutan's one-off designs for record-setting aircraft prove that endurance can be had with a pilot aboard. (Rutan's Voyager flew for nine days, or 216 hours, on its nonstop, round-the-world flight. It also demonstrated that a flight of that length is hard on pilots.)
The cost-saving argument, though, may not hold up for high-end machines such as the military's Predator and Global Hawk families, which can be priced in the tens of millions (average Global Hawk in 2003: $57 million) and require extensive logistics and ground crew. Versions tailored to the less-exotic needs of civil operators are cheaper but still priced like small business jets. Economy-class UAVs are confined to much smaller vehicles in a class with radio-control scale-model hobby aircraft; they are cheaper to acquire and operate. One problem at the low end is that many would-be operators think of them as the same as recreational scale models and don't yet realize that the flight of these vehicles falls under the jurisdiction of the FAA.
Perhaps a typical example is one from The New York Times of Jan. 13, 2005. Chang Industry, Inc., of La Verne, Calif., was reported to be marketing a five-pound aircraft with a four-foot wing and a unit cost of only $5,000. The company anticipated a demonstration for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to show off a video surveillance camera. With a fabric wing and kite-like structure, a service ceiling of 1,000 feet and an endurance of 20 minutes, the little airplane seemed harmless enough if things went south. But Chang knew its market: There was also a $15,000 model in the works with an eight-foot wing. An FAA spokesman quoted in the story pointed out that the agency would issue limited certificates of authorization defining where such aircraft could operate and under what conditions. And that's still the way it's done today.
There's no argument in wartime over the preference for an unmanned aircraft in combat areas where lives are at stake. The saving of an American life trumps all, and Congress has responded in kind. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports that between 2001 and 2004, UAV expenditures rose from $667 million to over $1.1 billion. In Washington, UAVs (now labeled "transformational," the magic word around the Department of Defense) are the darlings of procurement programs and may well have a total market somewhere north of $3 billion by now.
But the question lingers as to a UAV's comparative effectiveness and cost performing ordinary surveillance missions in the national airspace system (NAS) when the competition is a Cessna 182 with aux tanks and containing a couple of observers with night binoculars and piddle packs. Some estimates peg operating cost at six times a manned aircraft like the Cessna, while UAV advocates prefer to compare the price of their wares with a Lockheed P-3, a four-engine Navy antisubmarine patrol aircraft, or a Sikorsky Black Hawk. That argument won't be settled here, though. The issue of concern to business aviation is how the introduction of UAVs may affect our operations, particularly at the lower and middle altitudes where the civil versions are likely to fly.
Law-enforcement agencies conduct a lot of airborne surveillance missions, but within the last 30 to 40 years, eyeballs have concentrated along the borders, particularly the 2,062-mile-long one dividing the United States and Mexico. And there's lot to watch for, from smugglers running illegals across at night to drug couriers moving their goods north to urban markets. The former Customs Service ranged far and wide in its drug-interdiction missions, even employing sensor-equipped Cessna Citations to pursue blacked-out aircraft headed for landing strips and drop zones. The Border Patrol spent its days and nights in low-flying airplanes and helicopters "cutting sign" -- their term for tracking -- in the desert. Now the two agencies have been combined to form U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under the Department of Homeland Security. A 2005 report counted some 10,000 agents on duty on the southern border alone; the figure is sure to have risen.
With the exception of aerostats, simple tethered balloons mounting sensors that scan wide areas, aerial surveillance has been conducted mainly in piloted aircraft by these agencies and others. And throughout these efforts, the presence of pilots on the aircraft has ensured the safety of their operation in the NAS. In addition to the see-and-avoid doctrine governing visual flight, pilots flying surveillance could interact with ATC. Perhaps a science payload might fly IFR, but surveillance, by its very nature, connotes visual conditions. And for the most part, such flights were ordinary in every sense.
Aerostats present the same issues as tall broadcast towers and appear on charts and in NOTAMs. Impromptu deployments are a cause for concern, however. In November 2007, a Honolulu police helicopter collided with a balloon being flown above a department store and was forced to make an emergency landing with its tail rotor inoperable.
Advocates of UAVs argue that aircraft like the Predator B, operating today as the MQ-9 Unmanned Aircraft System for the CBP's Air and Marine division from a center in Riverside, Calif., fly at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet and are well above commercial and business traffic. However, the sensors deliver better images from altitudes lower than that, and operators are likely to go for the best pictures. The aircraft, manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems in San Diego, is operated remotely from the Air and Marine Operations Center by either line-of-sight direct link or Ku-band links via satellite when the horizon intervenes. Most of the General Atomics Predator family is also said to be capable of autonomous flight: programmed flight plans flown without a remote link.
When a Predator B surveillance aircraft crashed near Nogales, Ariz., in April 2006, a subsequent investigation revealed that the fuel supply to the aircraft's engine had been inadvertently shut down during a mix-up as two remote operators changed controls. The aircraft continued to descend, giving no indication of the problem, until it struck the ground. Although there were no casualties or property damage, the incident put the spotlight on a serious operational flaw. A news report at the time cited the value of the aircraft at $6.5 million (another said $14 million) and stated that it was generally operated at 15,000 feet. Another recent accident in Kinshasa, capital of the Congo, involving a European Union-operated Belgian-built UAV, reportedly killed one person and injured two others.
According to a CRS estimate, the UAV accident rate is 100 times that of manned aircraft, a factor that is seldom considered when system costs are reckoned.
Surveillance flights by UAVs are one thing when they're operating along the southern border far from congested airspace. But it's another matter to envision them performing surveillance over the major port cities on both coasts, although there is considerable enthusiasm among their advocates for employing them in just that role.
From a 2003 CRS document: "Additional roles for UAVs in the near future may include homeland security and medical resupply. The Coast Guard and Border Patrol, parts of the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, already have plans to deploy UAVs to watch coastal waters, patrol the nation's borders, and protect major oil and gas pipelines. Congressional support exists for using UAVs like the Predator for border security." Military operation would be inappropriate for such duties, the report said, so domestic agencies would carry out the missions. Still . . . medical resupply? Watch coastal waters? From another CRS paper: "The longer flight times of UAVs means that sustained coverage over a previously exposed area may improve border security."
But if the purpose is to stare at one spot for a very long time, why not install an aerostat or a camera tower? And the language justifying use of these vehicles invariably rolls out the "T" word. Has there been one proven instance of a terrorist entering the United States by overland crossing of the border in a remote area? Would a terrorist choose that route to, say, a crowded railroad terminal? So far, only government agencies have been seated around the tables where such questions are debated, and the FAA has been the sole guardian of NAS integrity.
Setting aside the unsettling feeling that the UAV movement is at least partly fueled by overwrought enthusiasm, there are the practicalities of their operation, and that's what moved the AOPA to ask for formation of a Special Committee under the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) to formulate the operational specifications of UAVs to operate in civilian airspace. The creation of SC-203 under the RTCA effectively blocks helpful suggestions from UAV advocates that the best solution to NAS flights was to revise the FARs or create semi-permanent temporary flight restrictions. The AOPA pointed out that a restricted area in a swath painted along the southern border would affect more than 100 airports.
In medicine, physicians adhere to the tenet "Do no harm." Heidi Williams, AOPA director of Air Traffic Services, states flatly, "We have gone on record to the FAA that any [UAV] integration into the NAS should be done without any harm to the existing civil airspace user." In expanding upon that, she says, the organization believes UAVs in the NAS should be regulated and equipped like other aircraft. At the heart of the discussion within circles such as SC-203 is the concept of "sense and avoid" and what that will mean. Obviously rooted in the concept of "see and avoid," the execution of an automated equivalent adds considerable complexity to the current architecture of the UAV, which is focused on surveillance below, not the airspace surrounding it. And the AOPA is rightly focused on keeping attention on the low- and mid-altitude vehicles with enough mass to create a hazard. Williams also emphasizes that the AOPA is not opposed to the introduction of UAVs into the NAS.
Envisioning actual operations leads to looming questions. How will UAVs in climb and descent phases of their missions manage encounters with other aircraft? If you instinctively think, "Light that sucker up so I can avoid him," you're not alone. Both visual and electronic beacons are needed even in daylight VMC because UAVs can be difficult to spot. But the current thinking would provide the UAV itself with an electronic awareness of its surroundings and automate its responses. That means programming relatively complicated scenarios such as the Right of Way Rule (FAR Part 91.113) governing overtaking, intersecting courses and head-on encounters. If you put yourself into any of those situations while driving your Learjet on an arrival profile, you would wish for an automated maneuver that would take the UAV out of the play completely.
The AOPA's Williams characterizes the present level of discussions as "concept and philosophy." Spokesman Chris Dancy adds, "The immediate concern the AOPA has is potential civil end users. They're getting ahead of the game but are not looking at the regulatory environment." He's talking about law-enforcement agencies, of course, in small towns everywhere who are thinking about how cool it would be to have their own little mini-Predator.
-
http://www.khou.com/news/local/HPD-helicopters-grounded-following-fuel-budget-cut--125791023.html
HOUSTON -- Numerous sources within HPD's Helicopter Unit say they are upset because the department's fuel budget was just cut by 75 percent.
And now the choppers, which are used for public safety, are just sitting on the ground for most of the day.
"I have received information today that the helicopters have been reduced from about 20-plus hours in the air to about 3 hours in the air per day. That is unacceptable," City Council Member C.O. Bradford said.
Bradford knows a lot about the fleet. He spent 24 years with HPD and for seven years he was the police chief.
"We have about a dozen helicopters sitting out there costing about a million dollars each and they are new. These helicopters are probably two years of age or less. We cannot afford to have those helicopters, and all of the technology inside those helicopters sitting on the ground," Bradford said.
KHOU 11 News confirmed Monday that a new Bell 412 helicopter, purchased by the federal government for HPD, will arrive soon.
When it gets here, sources inside HPD said mechanics will drain all of its fluids and store it in a hangar. It will not be used.
"You can bet I will be calling the police chief, asking the mayor to do what we can do in this city to get that safety tool back in the air," Bradford said.
Even though HPD's budget has been cut by $40 million, Bradford and Houston City Council Member James Rodriguez say the helicopter cuts are a concern because it affects public safety.
"We need to find the resources in this city to get those helicopters back into the air," Bradford said.
-
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/helicopter-240425-beach-police.html
Published: March 22, 2010 Updated: March 23, 2010 6:23 p.m.
Police helicopter programs get trimmed
Government agencies work to trim their budget resulting in less flight time for law enforcement's helicopters.BY ANNIE BURRIS / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Hovering about 900 feet in the air in a police helicopter, officer Ryan Walker moves a spotlight with 50 million candlepower over a local park looking for a missing 11-year-old girl.
Tactical flight officer Walker and pilot Rob Dimel circle the park and surrounding neighborhoods searching for the girl, who was last seen about an hour before in a red shirt and jeans. They cover miles at a time, doing what might take a patrol officer on the ground hours of legwork.
Tactical Flight Officer Ryan Walker, left, and pilot Rob Dimel patrol the skies over Orange County Friday night.
KEVIN SULLIVAN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
MORE PHOTOS »
ADVERTISEMENT
Cuts:
Huntington Beach – Voted March 1 to slash their helicopter budget by $108,000, taking two pilots and putting them back on regular patrol and having the helicopters fly 40 hours a week instead of 60.
Anaheim – Cut 15 hours of flying time out of the helicopter's usual 60 hours, saving the city about $868,000.
Orange County Sheriff – Cut their patrol time in half to two and a half hours a day, saving the department about $700,000.
A.B.L.E. – Cut its training budget by about $80,000.
Minutes later, a broadcast over one of the helicopter's nine radios confirms that the girl was found and has gone home. Mission accomplished.
"We are doing the same thing patrol cars are doing, we just see a whole lot more,'' said Dimel, who has worked 10 years with Costa Mesa and Newport Beach's joint helicopter program, including three as a pilot.
Law enforcement officials tout their helicopter programs as one of their most important and effective tools. Helicopters can move and search faster than a patrol car and they often act as a psychological deterrent to crime, they say. However, with the economic slowdown, agencies countywide have trimmed their helicopter programs by about $1.2 million and grounded their helicopters for more than 40 total hours a week.
Huntington Beach, Anaheim, the Orange County Sheriff's Department and California Highway Patrol have their own helicopter departments. Costa Mesa and Newport share a combined program called Airborne Law Enforcement, or A.B.L.E., which also contracts with the Santa Ana Police Department.
Huntington Beach's helicopter is called HB1, Anaheim's is Angel, A.B.L.E.'s is Eagle, and the sheriff's is Duke after John Wayne. CHP's helicopter names vary throughout the state.
Due to budget cuts, Huntington Beach has decreased its flight time to 40 hours from 60, saving about $108,000. Anaheim has cut their hours to 45 from 60, reducing costs by $311,000, and the Sheriff's Department slashed its air time in half – from five hours a day to two and a half, saving $700,000. A.B.L.E. decreased its training budget by about $80,000.
"It is so helpful on so many incidents," said Sgt. Rick Martinez with the Anaheim Police Department. "You can feel the void when they are not there."
Because of the decreased air time, Huntington Beach police have fewer resources readily available, spokesman Lt. Russell Reinhart said.
"A lot of it is less efficiency on our end and less service we can give to the community," he said.
-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=aL6a0DLT6YQ&NR=1[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=aL6a0DLT6YQ&NR=1
Imminent threat.
-
GM:
Frankly I see these articles you post as non-responsive to the points I am making.
a) we should not depend upon costs of intrusive surveillance for the protection of our freedom
b) costs of the technolgy are and will continue to decline dramatically
c) the technologies capabilities and sneakiness are and will continue to increase dramatically.
======
On a different but related matter, its a good thing that we have Attorney General Holder to protect us from the misuse of surveilling technology in the government's hands like this:
WSJ
In August 2010, Libyan journalist Khaled Mehiri shot an email to his editor at al-Jazeera proposing an article about the hollow nature of the Gadhafi regime's anticorruption efforts.
Before the story was even written, the regime knew about it. Libyan security agents had intercepted the email, using an Internet-surveillance system purchased from a French company, Amesys.
For months, the agents monitored the journalist's emails and Facebook messages via the Amesys tools, printing out messages and storing them in a file that The Wall Street Journal recovered in an abandoned electronic-surveillance headquarters in Tripoli.
In January 2011, as the Arab Spring was exploding in neighboring Tunisia and unrest was building in Libya, Mr. Mehiri was summoned for a face-to-face meeting with Moammar Gadhafi's intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi, who Mr. Mehiri says admonished him not to publish remarks by certain leading anti-Gadhafi activists.
The surveillance operation now is causing headaches for Amesys, a unit of French technology company Bull SA. Lawmakers from the opposition Socialist Party in France have called for a parliamentary inquiry into any role the French government might have played in facilitating Amesys's sale of equipment to Libya. Human-rights groups have filed court complaints asking French prosecutors to investigate Amesys for what the groups call possible violations of export rules and complicity in torture. Prosecutors haven't yet ruled on the requests.
The French company acknowledges it sold Web-surveillance equipment to Libya but says it has done nothing wrong. "All Amesys activities strictly adhere to the statutory and regulatory requirements of both European and French international conventions," a spokeswoman said. "We are fully prepared to answer any questions which the legal authorities may ask us."
French government officials said the presidency and the office of then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy were routinely informed of Amesys's negotiations and the subsequent contract in Libya. French authorities, however, didn't vet the Amesys export to Libya because such equipment doesn't require a special license when sold outside France, the officials said. Mr. Sarkozy, who became president in May 2007, declined to comment through a spokesman.
In statements, Amesys and parent company Bull have emphasized that Libya had become a counterterrorism ally with Western governments by 2007, when the contract was signed.
Mr. Mehiri's tangle with the Libyan surveillance apparatus shows how U.S. and European interception technology, though often exported for the stated purpose of tracking terrorists, could instead be deployed against dissidents, human-rights campaigners, journalists or everyday enemies of the state—all categories that appear in Libyan surveillance files reviewed by the Journal.
The story also underscores how the intelligence apparatus overseen by Mr. Senussi, the spy chief, invaded the lives of Libyans amid acquiescence from the West.
Enlarge Image
CloseKhaled Mehiri
Emails of reporter Khaled Mehiri, pictured, were monitored, and he was called to a meeting with Gadhafi spy chief Abdullah Senussi.
.Enlarge Image
CloseReuters
Abdullah Senussi
.Mr. Mehiri calls Amesys's decision to sell Libya an invasive spying tool despite Gadhafi's history of repression "a cowardly act and a flagrant violation of human rights," adding: "To me, they are therefore directly involved in the work of the Gadhafi criminal regime."
Mr. Senussi is wanted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague on war-crimes charges for his role in the brutal crackdown against Libyan protesters this spring. About three weeks ago, forces loyal to Libya's transitional government said they had apprehended him, but the government hasn't confirmed this. His whereabouts remain unclear.
Philippe Vannier, a former head of Amesys and current chief executive of Bull, was seen in Tripoli meeting with Mr. Senussi around 2007, according to a person familiar with the matter. Bull and Mr. Vannier declined to comment on that.
Mr. Senussi was long viewed by human-rights advocates as one of Gadhafi's most ruthless operatives, suspected of a role in the assassinations of Libyan dissidents abroad. A French court in 1999 convicted him in absentia of masterminding the 1989 bombing of a French airplane in central Africa that killed 170 people.
Libyan authorities didn't make Mr. Senussi available for questioning by the French court. It is unclear whether he ever made any public statement concerning the bombing or assassinations.
Mr. Mehiri antagonized the Gadhafi regime with articles that took aim at rights abuses. He wrote about poverty that persisted despite Libya's oil wealth. He came to be considered by some an expert on a mass killing of more than 1,200 inmates in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison in June 1996, after he spent months interviewing relatives and survivors.
Mr. Mehiri, 38 years old, grew up in a small town outside the eastern city of Benghazi and studied journalism there. He worked for various Libyan media outlets, some of which were shut down. When Internet service became widespread in the country around 2004, he worked for online Arabic news outlets, including one of the top Libyan dissident sites, Libya Today. In 2007 he started writing for the website of al-Jazeera, the Arabic television channel based in Qatar.
"I had ambitions to find professional and free journalism in my country," Mr. Mehiri says. "For this reason, I decided not to leave the field and to continue my work no matter the circumstances or threats against me."
Those threats ebbed and flowed, he says. By the mid-2000s, he found himself the defendant in a series of what he calls harassment lawsuits, filed by people he said had ties to the security agencies. Human-rights lawyers came to his defense, helping him avoid stiff penalties or jail time in these cases.
In 2009, however, he was convicted of the criminal offense of working for a foreign news organization without the proper license, after a controversial interview he gave to al-Jazeera. In it, he alleged, based on his reporting about the mass prison killing, that Mr. Senussi was at the prison that day, a conclusion that groups like Human Rights Watch have also reached based on survivor testimony.
Mr. Mehiri says a prosecutor allowed him to remain free on condition he sign in each week at the central judicial office in Tripoli. Harassment by intelligence agencies increased, however, he says, including interrogation by prosecutors who said he was under investigation for spying and threatening state security—crimes punishable by death.
During this period, Gadhafi, long a pariah to Western governments, was reaping the benefits of a newfound acceptance. Libya started to come in from the cold around 2003 by relinquishing its weapons of mass destruction program, agreeing to help fight terrorism and later paying large sums to the families of terrorism victims, including those killed in the airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, for which a Libyan was convicted.
In 2007, Mr. Sarkozy welcomed Gadhafi on an official visit to France, his first in more than three decades.
The Libyan regime saw an opportunity to upgrade its surveillance capability with French technology, according to people familiar with the matter.
Amesys signed its contract with Libya that year, it said, and then in 2008 shipped its "Eagle" surveillance system and sent engineers to Libya to help set it up. The system became fully operational in 2009, the people familiar with it said.
The Libyan government now had a powerful new tool to track its adversaries. The system intercepted traffic from Libya's main Internet service provider and sent it to the monitoring center in Tripoli, which the Journal found in August after rebels overran the capital city.
There, a wall of black refrigerator-size devices inspected the Internet traffic, opening emails, divining passwords, snooping on online chats and mapping connections among various suspects. A sign on the wall in the main room gave the name, French phone number and Amesys corporate email of an Amesys employee, Renaud Roques, to call for technical help. Mr. Roques didn't respond to a request for comment. The Amesys spokeswoman said the company didn't have access to the use made of the equipment in the center.
In an adjoining room, a file on Mr. Mehiri, bound in a green folder marked with the name of Libya's internal-security service, lay amid scores of others stacked in floor-to-ceiling shelves. It shows he had been subjected to electronic surveillance at least as far back as August 2010 and as recently as last February.
The file consists of dozens of pages of emails. All feature the designation "https://eagle/interceptions" in the upper right corner, an indication that agents printed out the messages using the Eagle interception system from Amesys.
The file reveals a journalist working to document the underbelly of Libya, while struggling to fend off pressure from the regime.
In an email to a Human Rights Watch researcher, Mr. Mehiri frets about a defamation suit, which he worries could become a pretext for an arrest. In another email, he tells the researcher the date of the first hearing and updates her on the case of another Libyan journalist.
"Please do not reveal my identity because things are risky here," he writes. "We hope that you support the journalists here in Libya."
Much of the file consists of emails between Mr. Mehiri and other journalists, including editors at al-Jazeera, describing his ideas for articles. One was to be a piece about a Gadhafi son who said there was no strife in Libya. Another he planned was about how Libya was compensating victims of bombings by the Irish Republican Army, which Libya at one point helped arm, but not victims of the Libyan prison massacre.
Mr. Mehiri long suspected his communications were being monitored, but didn't confirm this until a meeting in January with a longtime source, a Gadhafi cousin and policy adviser. He says the man told him the regime had copies of his emails. "He even described the color of the text written by my editors when they were making changes in my copy," Mr. Mehiri says.
A few days later, Mr. Mehiri found himself in a confrontation with the official whose surveillance apparatus had been tracking him. He was summoned to a meeting with Mr. Senussi in Tripoli on Jan. 16. It was two days after the departure from office of Tunisia's president, Zine el Abedine Ben Ali, signaled the full explosion of the Arab Spring.
Mr. Mehiri says he showed up for the meeting in Mr. Senussi's office wearing jeans, tennis shoes and an old jacket, a sign of disrespect in his culture, because he wanted to show he wasn't scared.
The meeting lasted four hours. Mr. Senussi, a man with jet-black curly hair and small, deep-set eyes, talked about the need for reform in Libya and said the government was interested in change, but he also leveled subtle but clear threats, Mr. Mehiri says. He warned not to publish remarks by certain core activists and reminded Mr. Mehiri that he could be picked up by police at will because of his prior conviction.
"He argued about my style in covering events," Mr. Mehiri says. "I spoke about myself, my family, my profession and the origin and history of my tribe. I found out that he already knew all my personal information."
Libyan agents continued to intercept Mr. Mehiri's emails after the meeting. They printed out one he sent two days later to editors at al-Jazeera.
"Tomorrow, journalists here are holding a protest against confiscating people's properties," he wrote. "Should I send a report?"
Surveillance continued after the uprising began. On Feb. 25, Libyan agents intercepted an email sent by a Libyan law professor, Faiza al Basha, to a group that included Mr. Mehiri and employees of the U.S. State Department and a United Nations agency, in which she advocated trying to get Google Inc. to open up a live view of Libya on Google Earth that would "help us track down the security personnel and therefore inform protesters and demonstrators about the locations of the security personnel so they can avoid them." Ms. Basha confirmed making that suggestion "to help the rebels achieve the liberation."
By then, Mr. Mehiri wasn't checking his email. Though he had covered the protests the first few days after they broke out in eastern Libya on Feb. 15, he began to worry that if the regime sent troops to Benghazi, he was likely to pay for his years of criticizing it. Fearing also for his wife and young son, he put down his recorder and reporting pad and went into hiding. He stayed out of view for the rest of the war.
"When I went underground, large amounts of news discussing this crackdown was not published," Mr. Mehiri says. All along, the medium had been the message, he says: "Surveillance alone is enough to terrorize people."
Mr. Mehiri came out of hiding in September, shortly after Libya's rebels gained control of the capital. He's now back at work in Benghazi writing about Libya's political changes for al-Jazeera.
—David Gauthier-Villars contributed to this article.
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203764804577056230832805896.html#ixzz1gWloxI4h
-
GM:
Frankly I see these articles you post as non-responsive to the points I am making.
a) we should not depend upon costs of intrusive surveillance for the protection of our freedom
**As pointed out many times before, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy when out in the public venue. The feds and well financed local/state agencies have long used aircraft for surveillance purposes, though even they don't use it often, given the costs involved.
b) costs of the technolgy are and will continue to decline dramatically
**Not according to the Aviation Week article. Are Business Jets/helicopters and pilots notably cheaper these days? If so, why are police aviation units getting cut/closed down?
c) the technologies capabilities and sneakiness are and will continue to increase dramatically.
**By what measurement? Please quantify "sneakiness" for the purposes of this topic.
-
My favorite fights on the board are between GM and Crafty on privacy. :-) I'm busy now but will come back later with popcorn...
-
:lol:
GM:
Sneaky is the opposite of readily detectable.
A helicopter buzzing overhead is one helluva tip off that you might be being watched. A satellite orbiting above earth than can tell the size of a woman's breasts is another matter, as are the tiny cameras and tiny flying nanobots that are in the pipeline-- and they will cost a fraction of what helicopters and planes cost to buy and operate.
But lets put aside the issue of cost. If massive all pervasive surveillance could be afforded, would you be for or against it? Under the logic you continuously give, the answer will be that you have no problem with it. Your use of cost is essentially an evasion and/or subterfuge from the core point: Do we have a right to live free of continuous surveillance absent reasonable cause?
-
"A helicopter buzzing overhead is one helluva tip off that you might be being watched."
It's been decades since surveillance aircraft needed to be visible/audible to be close enough to surveil a subject. If the FBI (as an example) was serious about placing you under surveillance, It would be mutiple teams and air cover 24/7 and you would have to be very good/lucky to detect anything. Does that violate your rights? Surveillance like this is very expensive, and not done lightly, but I'm glad the FBI can do this.
-
Your use of cost is essentially an evasion and/or subterfuge from the core point: Do we have a right to live free of continuous surveillance absent reasonable cause?
Surveillance by whom? Perhaps your life experience in coastal megacities has blinded you to a fact small town hicks like myself learned early on, namely "the are no secrets in a small town". Exactly what sort of privacy did one have in the colonial villages? Some police techniques date back to the "Shire Reeves" who would "canvass" the neighbors as part of an investigation, something still done to this day. Do your neighbors have a right to observe you?
-
Surveillance by the State is different than nosy neighbors or small town gossip both in sitio-- and in the fact that one can move elsewhere and start fresh. Perhaps your life experience in a small town has blinded you to this :-D
May I suggest reading George Orwell's "1984"?
-
Ah, I've traveled far from my hayseed roots, even lived in Noo Yawk City for several months while working for Uncle Sugar. :wink:
I've read Orwell, and I can see clear differences between America in 2011 and his dystopian vision. Do you?
I'd point out that picking up and moving elsewhere was pretty rare for most people in human history. Hell, even in NYC you have those that have never ventured into a different Borough. Your vision of privacy is based on a very small segment of history in a rapidly disappearing golden age.
-
"I'd point out that picking up and moving elsewhere was pretty rare for most people in human history , , , Your vision of privacy is based on a very small segment of history in a rapidly disappearing golden age."
This small segment of history started at Plymouth Rock. From there it just kept on picking up and moving elsewhere pretty much non-stop. Pretty exceptional some of us might say-- and along the way we have had to fight to keep it that way. Not for the first time freedom hangs in the balance and not for the first time will some of us step up for it.
I reject your call to defeatism. I live it as I see it. We all die.
-
This small segment of history started at Plymouth Rock.
And most people clustered around those points and built up those cities rather than pushing out into the wilderness. Loading your wife, kids and all your worldly belongings into a wagon and heading into the wilderness resulted in tragic results more often than is commonly recognized.
I'm not a defeatist, just a realist. Technology is a double-edged sword and one cannot decry it's ills while embracing it's goods. Say one of your kids has gone missing on a camping trip in the Sierra Nevadas. Given the choice, you you want the local Sheriff's Dept to have a small UAV with FLIR capabilities or not?
-
Please note that we have always been in agreement that such devices can be used in the context of reasonable cause e.g. finding my son lost in the mountains so please cease with such irrelevancies.
The point I am making (and despite your high IQ you keep avoiding) is that due to technological advances and declining costs we are very much headed towards an Orwellian World where the State is putting in place a permanent surveillance grid where most of live with permanent records because it can. Again I challenge you to answer this question:
"But lets put aside the issue of cost. If massive all-pervasive surveillance could be afforded, would you be for or against it? Under the logic you continuously give, the answer will be that you have no problem with it. Your use of cost is essentially an evasion and/or subterfuge from the core point: Do we have a right to live free of continuous surveillance absent reasonable cause?"
"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." --Thomas Jefferson
-
From GM: "Technology is a double-edged sword and one cannot decry it's ills while embracing it's goods. Say one of your kids has gone missing on a camping trip in the Sierra Nevadas. Given the choice, you you want the local Sheriff's Dept to have a small UAV with FLIR capabilities or not?"
I must confess to not understanding your point here, GM. There is a major difference between use and misuse. I appreciate trucks, for example, and decry their use in human trafficking. I appreciate beer, and decry drunk driving (or other dangerous, derogatory behavior that often accompanies intoxication). I appreciate guns, and decry their use school, workplace, domestic, terroristic shootings.
I realize that I am jumping into an already established, ongoing debate. If you prefer to not reply because of this, I understand.
-
From GM: "Technology is a double-edged sword and one cannot decry it's ills while embracing it's goods. Say one of your kids has gone missing on a camping trip in the Sierra Nevadas. Given the choice, you you want the local Sheriff's Dept to have a small UAV with FLIR capabilities or not?"
I must confess to not understanding your point here, GM. There is a major difference between use and misuse. I appreciate trucks, for example, and decry their use in human trafficking. I appreciate beer, and decry drunk driving (or other dangerous, derogatory behavior that often accompanies intoxication). I appreciate guns, and decry their use school, workplace, domestic, terroristic shootings.
I realize that I am jumping into an already established, ongoing debate. If you prefer to not reply because of this, I understand.
I was addressing an ongoing theme/meme that has become quite common here and elsewhere, where every bit of technology adopted by law enforcement is perceived as some sort of harbinger of an orwellian dystopia.
-
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-police-camera-20111224,0,6492627.story
-
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-police-camera-20111224,0,6492627.story
I am utterly unsurprised to read this.
-
GPS Devices and the Fourth Amendment
Courts are increasingly beginning to grapple with whether such devices are intrusive enough to personal privacy to require a warrant to justify their placement on vehicles.
View at http://www.aele.org/law/2010-12MLJ101.html
-
:lol:
Gun Owners Scores a Victory for Individual Privacy in the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court yesterday unanimously sided with Gun Owners of
America in finding that the placement of a Global Positioning Device on
an automobile constitutes a "search" for purposes of the
Fourth Amendment.
The majority opinion in U.S. v. Jones was written by Justice Antonin
Scalia and follows GOA's reasoning to throw out the "reasonable
expectation of privacy" test which has been thought to be the
dominant Fourth Amendment standard in recent years.
The Obama Administration argued that because the police could
theoretically follow Antoine Jones' car, he had no "reasonable
expectation of privacy," and thus, placing a GPS device on his car
was justified. GOA argued, however, that this constituted an
"unreasonable search and seizure" which violates the Fourth
Amendment of the Constitution.
This decision will have dramatic ramifications for gun owners. Indeed,
the Court looked to the Founders' intentions with respect to the Fourth
Amendment, which, until the latter part of the 20th Century, was
understood to restrict the ability of police to "trespass"
upon the persons or property of Americans.
"This is no less than a fundamental transformation of American
jurisprudence concerning searches and seizures," according to
GOA's Executive Director Larry Pratt. "And it is a transformation
which throws out fake modern jurisprudence and restores the Founders'
intent."
The "reasonable expectation of privacy" test flowed from a
Justice Harlan concurring opinion in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S.
347 (1967). Gun Owners of America had argued that the Supreme Court
should jettison that decision by an activist court, and a majority of
the justices agreed.
"The 'expectation of privacy' test for searches and seizures arose
without support in the text or historical context of the Fourth
Amendment, and has proven wholly inadequate to protect the American
people from their government," argued GOA.
Four members of the court -- led by Samuel Alito, and joined by Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan -- argued for the
continuation of the "reasonable expectation of privacy test,"
but concluded that planting a GPS device on a car for 28 days
constituted a Fourth Amendment "search" under that standard
as well.
The Obama administration, which had argued that planting a GPS device
on a car was not a "search" under the Harlan standard, was
unanimously repudiated by the High Court. And the case is being cited
by the mainstream media as a defeat for Obama and his Justice
Department, which is led by Attorney General Eric Holder.
Said Pratt: "This is yet another failure by Eric Holder, the most
corrupt and incompetent Attorney General in the history of the
Republic."
Gun Owners would like to thank its activists for their support. Your
giving at http://gunowners.org/store/contribute helps GOA to assist in
future cases like this at the Supreme Court.
-
I applaud that "The Supreme Court yesterday finding that the placement of a Global Positioning Device on an automobile constitutes a "search" for purposes of the Fourth Amendment."
But I'm missing, not being an attorney, what does that have to do directly with gun owners anymore than anyone else?
-
An interesting question, is your encrypted laptop protected?
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/24/tech/web/judge-defendant-decrypt-laptop/index.html?hpt=hp_bn6
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/01/decrypt.pdf
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/01/efffricosu.pdf
-
I get up in 5 hours and so don't have the time to read those with the care they merit in this moment, but I heard about this decision. This issue seems worthy of our collective consideration. Big Dog, care to frame the issues for us?
-
Three preliminary things:
1. This type of issue occurs increasingly, as technology increases. The courts have decided wiretapping, cell phone, GPS (this week, of course). Cases involving the TSA body scanners and other related devices will be taken to court in the future, I suspect.
2. I have a bias toward civil liberties, so understand that as you read below.
3. I have a busy morning, so this will be incomplete.
One strategy issue: If I were her attorney, I wouldn't stop at the 5th Amendment self incrimination clause. For example, the demand that Fricosu turn over an unencrypted computer, possibly, might be construed as an unreasonable search. The FBI already literally had its hands on the device. Its inability to decode it would seem to be an indictment on them.
I like the EFF brief. It recognizes the use of computers for a variety of jobs. It notes the legitimate use of encryption, whether for business or for privacy concerns.
Moreover, the 5th protections begin immediately (see Miranda rights for evidence). Speech, and as a likely extension written testimony (including the typing of a password) would seem to be a version of "witness."
The long and short of it is that I find the EFF amicus brief to be compelling.
-
Limited time here as well.
I recall from a computer crime class that a judge can issue an order to unencrypt a computer using the same legal concept compelling a suspect to unlock a safe.
-
Limited time here as well.
I recall from a computer crime class that a judge can issue an order to unencrypt a computer using the same legal concept compelling a suspect to unlock a safe.
I'll let better legal minds here correct me, but it is my understanding that while police have the right to search a safe, they cannot compel a suspect to unlock a safe. Obviously, they can break into it if the owner refuses. In a similar
vein, CA Courts have ruled Police have the right to search a cell phone. However, if you have it password locked, you have no obligation to give the password to them. As one criminal attorney told me when we discussed this matter, "you are not obliged to do anything to make the officers' job easier".
-
The safe analogy is covered in the EFF amicus.
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/real-news-from-the-blaze-breaks-down-how-googles-new-privacy-policy-breaches-your-privacy/
-
This seems to me to raise the right questions:
EVERY day, those of us who live in the digital world give little bits of ourselves away. On Facebook and LinkedIn. To servers that store our e-mail, Google searches, online banking and shopping records. Does the fact that so many of us live our lives online mean we have given the government wide-open access to all that information?
The Supreme Court’s decision last week in United States v. Jones presents the disturbing possibility that the answer is yes. In Jones, the court held that long-term GPS surveillance of a suspect’s car violated the Fourth Amendment. The justices’ 9-to-0 decision to protect constitutional liberty from invasive police use of technology was celebrated across the ideological spectrum.
Perhaps too quickly. Jones, along with other recent decisions, may turn the Fourth Amendment into a ticking time bomb, set to self-destruct — and soon — in the face of rapidly emerging technology.
Dog sniffs. Heat sensors. Helicopter flyovers. Are these “searches” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment? The court has struggled with these questions over the years.
Writing for the court in Jones, Justice Antonin Scalia looked to the 18th century for guidance. In his view, attaching the GPS was the sort of physical invasion of property the framers had in mind when they wrote the Bill of Rights.
Though Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed that GPS tracking was a search, he ridiculed Justice Scalia for focusing on “conduct that might have provided grounds in 1791 for a suit for trespass to chattels.” For Justice Alito, the risk the GPS posed was loss of privacy, not property. Instead the question was whether long-term GPS tracking violated today’s “reasonable expectations of privacy,” not those of another era. As a matter of existing doctrine, he asked the right question, but when applied to the government, the standard he used could turn our lives into the proverbial open book, and soon.
Focusing on public expectations of privacy means that our rights change when technology does. As Justice Alito blithely said: “New technology may provide increased convenience or security at the expense of privacy, and many people may find the tradeoff worthwhile.”
But aren’t constitutional rights intended to protect our liberty even when the public accepts “increased convenience or security at the expense of privacy”? Fundamental rights remain fundamental in the face of time and new inventions.
Paradoxically, Justice Scalia’s approach will better protect privacy rights over the long term. (He didn’t deny the importance of today’s expectations; he simply stressed that at the very least, the Fourth Amendment protects rights we had when the framers drafted the Constitution.) Still, his approach is problematic. There isn’t always an available 18th-century analog for current government conduct, like GPS tracking. Justice Alito facetiously suggested that the only 18th-century analog would have been a constable hiding in the back of someone’s carriage. (When Justice Scalia agreed, Justice Alito wryly remarked that “this would have required either a gigantic coach, a very tiny constable, or both.”) And when 18th-century analogs run out, the court is left with its reasonable expectation test.
In a related case, Kyllo v. United States, even Justice Scalia held that police use of a thermal imager to detect marijuana “grow lamps” within a home was a search — but only so long as such technology was “not in general public use.” There’s that time bomb: expanding use of technology narrows rights.
Among the justices in the Jones case, only Sonia Sotomayor insisted that fundamental rights not be hostage to technological change. She called into question the court’s longstanding reliance on expectations of privacy, which she deemed “ill-suited to the digital age.” She suggested reconsidering the rule that the police can, without a warrant, get the vast amounts of information about ourselves that we give to third parties. To her, sharing our secrets — including e-mail and banking histories — with someone else does not necessarily mean the government gets access, too. It is too bad her separate opinion mustered no other votes.
Barry Friedman is a professor at the New York University School of Law and the author of “The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution.”
-
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Hide_From_Google
Hide From Google
From Wired How-To Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search
To increase your online security, don't put all your cookies in one basket. Photo by Chris Wetherell/[1]/CC
"If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." —blue_beetle, Metafilter discussion.
Google started off the new year by announcing that they will be changing their privacy policies so that they can create more detailed profiles of their users. Starting March 1st, 2012, Google will combine information from user’s Gmail, Google Search history, YouTube, and other services. Prior to this change, Google profiled their users, but restricted the profile data use to the service from which the data was collected.
Because we have come to rely on web services so much in our day-to-day activities, it simply isn't an option to stop using search, webmail, and social networking. But there are ways for heavy users to keep a low profile so that, should Google turn decidedly evil, you won't be completely at their mercy. If you are concerned about the amount of information that Google knows about you for whatever reason, here are some techniques you can use to guard your privacy online.
This how-to was written by Ari Douglas, an engineer-turned-lawyer, who spends his time contemplating the nexus between law, technology, and society.
Contents [hide]
1 Distributed computing
1.1 Mix and Match Services
1.2 Use a Proxy
1.3 Segment Your Email Traffic
1.4 Multi-Browser Surfing
2 Turning Off Google Web History
3 Special considerations for mobile phones
Distributed computingA powerful tool to help you regain some control over your online privacy is to spread your information over several services. Think of each piece of your personal information as a puzzle piece. If you use all of Google's products, they have the ability to complete the puzzle and see the full picture. They know what you do online (Google Search), who you correspond with (Google Voice, Gmail, Google Plus), where you go (Google Maps), and what you do (Google Calendar). With the privacy policy change, Google will be using data-mining algorithms to combine these sources of personal information to create detailed profiles of their users. By spreading your personal information over several services, you withhold puzzle pieces and ensure that no one company knows the full picture of your personal life while preserving the convenience of using those web-services.
Mix and Match Services
The task of segmenting your online activities amongst several sites may be painful if you're a creature of habit, but ultimately worth it for the peace of mind. For most people, this means making sure that your email and search engine are operated by different companies. Because it is a bigger hassle to change your email address, it is easier to change what search engine you use.
Google.com has long dominated the search engine category, but there's no such thing as a healthy monopoly. Recently, other companies have strengthened their offerings such that for common searches, you won't notice any difference in search result quality. Some alternative search engines are Ask.com, Bing.com, DuckDuckGo.com, and Yahoo.com. You can set any of these to your home page, and still return to Google for individual searches on the rare occasion that the alternative search engine does not return useful results.
Use a Proxy
Another method of search engine obfuscation is to use a service that proxies your requests to Google while removing your personal information. Scroogle.com does this, as does the Google-Sharing plugin for the FireFox web browser.
Segment Your Email Traffic
Another trick you can use is to set up single-purpose email addresses to segment your information. This means that you use your primary email address (that you have given out to people) only for email. Then you make new email accounts for other services. For example, you could make a new email account for your Picasa pictures, or Google Reader. This way, Google cannot correlate the contents of your email with the content of your pictures or what you like to read.
Multi-Browser Surfing
The final tool for information segmentation is to know that you can use multiple web browsers to keep your information separate. Whenever you are logged into a Google service, such as Gmail, all of your searches in that browser (even in other browser tabs) are logged and associated with your Google account (which you can view in the upper right hand corner of the Google search page to see what account you are logged in with.
You can use separate browsers to log into two separate Google accounts at once. Or you can have one browser logged in to Google and the other browser not logged in. For example, if you have any combination of FireFox, Opera, Chrome and Safari open, you can use each to login to a different account system to complete different tasks, ie: log into gmail in one browser, while doing your web-browsing and searching in a separate browser.
Turning Off Google Web HistoryGoogle Web History archives all of your Google Search activity. You can review the information at that link, see what information Google is using to customize your search results. Google allows you to "pause" and/or remove Web History. This prevents your search results from being reviewed through the Web History interface, and stops Google from using the information to customize your search results. However, Google retains your search history for use in profiling.
Special considerations for mobile phonesSmartphones provide some special challenges for segmenting your information. It is more difficult to log out of Google on a smartphone because Google Contacts and Gmail integrate closely with the functionality of the phone. Because you cannot log out, it is difficult to use Google services without Google associating the usage with your account. The solution is to use Google alternatives where possible. Using an alternative web browser, search engine, and map software will prevent Google from collecting additional information about you.
Depending on our phone, you may have the ability to use multiple Google accounts, and may be able to choose what information to sync with Google's services. For example, you could have your primary Google account on the phone, which you allow to sync email and contacts, but also have a Google account created for a specific service, which syncs only that service's information (ie: you could set up a Google account solely for using the Google Reader blog reader, and only sync the Google Reader information while turning off the syncing of all other account information).
Finally, most smartphones allow you to control location services. If you're concerned about privacy, keep it turned off while you are not using it. Not only does this protect your privacy, but it saves your battery life as well.
This page was last modified 22:30, 3 February 2012 by howto_admin.
-
Thank you for that GM.
-
Crafty regarding 'Hide from Google' article: "Thank you for that GM."
Ditto! I have enjoyed the 'free' products from Google especially web search and searchable email. I try not to support the company because of differing politics but hey, free is free, and getting information and saving information is valuable to me.
Of course free is not free. These large players like to get their subscriber base and traffic way up before filling it with ads or starting the fees. A great and scary line from the article:
"If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
Unless you want a record of your life kept for sale at private companies, we should all be taking the steps suggested in the article at the very minimum and that will only limit their knowledge of you.
I have warned people about obvious privacy losses on Facebook and the less obvious ones like facial recognition searching. It affects even people not on the network. Google holds nearly all of my correspondence back to the first days of gmail. If the State Dept can be hacked and Stratfor and everyone else, why not these sites. They don't even need to be hacked; they already admit reading your mail, tracking where you go and selling you off as a product.
-
I note that the social networking sites are like link analysis intelligence charts, the only difference with social networking is the subjects of the charting fill them out for you.
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/will-the-eu-use-drones-to-spy-and-enforce-regulations-on-farms-sure-looks-like-it/
-
Who or what knows you better than you know yourself?
http://techland.time.com/2012/02/17/how-target-knew-a-high-school-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-parents/
-
OMG!!! Good news!!!
====================
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577239650306276074.html?mod=technology_newsreel
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris reached an agreement with six of the largest companies in the mobile-device market that could change how app makers handle personal data and the way millions of people download apps.
Ms. Harris said Wednesday that Apple Inc., Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Research In Motion Ltd. agreed that California law requires apps to have privacy policies, and that they would begin asking app developers who collect personal information to include them.
Ms. Harris said, some 22 of the 30 most-downloaded mobile apps don't have privacy policies. "We have populations without knowledge of [mobile technology's] potential uses who are potentially vulnerable," she said; "We seek to give them tools to protect themselves."
While the agreement specifically applies to enforcement of a 2004 California law requiring privacy policies, it will benefit "users everywhere," she added. Previously, California law has been used to require privacy policies from websites, but it was unclear if it applied to apps.
California's deal with the companies stops short of saying that they will enforce privacy-policy requirements or kick apps that don't have a policy out of their stores. The state is responsible for enforcing the law, but the companies agreed they would help educate developers on their legal obligations.
Ms. Harris said that the companies were participating voluntarily in "good faith" with the effort, and that they planned to meet again in six months to see how the effort was progressing.
A Google spokesman declined to say how the company would enforce the rules on its Android-smartphone app store. In a statement, he said, "From the beginning, Android has had an industry-leading permissions system which informs consumers what data an app can access and requires user approval before installation. Coupled with the announced principles, which we expect to complete in the coming weeks, consumers will have even more ways to make informed decisions when it comes to their privacy."
A Research In Motion spokeswoman said: "We're looking forward to working with the attorney general of California and the application-developer community to further build out the necessary tools that will help facilitate the ability of our application developers to bring greater user awareness of their privacy policies and practices."
"Microsoft is committed to being a leader in consumer privacy across all of our products and services. We are pleased to endorse the statement of principles and to support the work of Attorney General Harris," said a Microsoft spokeswoman.
An Apple spokesman confirmed the company's participation in the agreement, but declined to comment further. An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment. H-P didn't respond to requests for comment.
Most consumers don't read website privacy policies, which often contain vague legal language designed to be as broad as possible to shield companies, rather than to specify exactly what information is being collected.
In an interview, Ms. Harris said thatshe agreed most privacy policies are "absolutely beyond the understanding of the average person," but that the six companies agreed in principle that app privacy policies "are going to be more clear and understandable."She said simply requiring privacy policies would force app developers to think about what information they are requiring from consumers—and why. Moreover, she said, the policies would give her office the ability to prosecute app makers that took or used consumer information in ways that ran counter to them.
"It is important that it creates a hook for enforcement that did not exist before, which is the only hook that typically exists for privacy enforcement in this country," said Justin Brookman, the director of consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington.
A study of 101 popular apps that was part of The Wall Street Journal's "What They Know" series in late 2010 found that 56 of them transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone's location in some way, while five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.
Last week, the Federal Trade Commission published a working document that urged developers of mobile apps for children to provide more information on data collection and said it plans to review whether apps violate child privacy laws.
Separately on Wednesday, 36 attorneys general, including California's Ms. Harris, sent an open letter to Google protesting its new privacy policy, set to take effect in March. In the letter, they said the policy "appears to invade consumer privacy by automatically sharing personal information consumers input into one Google product with all Google products."
The letter asks for Google to respond by Feb. 29.
The Google spokesman said its updated privacy policy will make its privacy practices "easier to understand" and reflects its desire to create a "seamless experience" for signed-in users. We've undertaken the most extensive notification effort in Google's history, and we're continuing to offer choice and control over how people use our services. Of course we are happy to discuss this approach with regulators globally.
—Jessica E. Vascellaro and Will Connors contributed to this article.
Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com
====================
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577241502216430274.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES
A group of Internet and advertising companies including Google Inc. said on Thursday that it will support a "do not track" setting in Web browsers—a turning point in online privacy but likely setting off a battle over what exactly the new policy will mean.
The Digital Advertising Alliance—which represents more than 400 companies—disclosed its support for "do not track" as part of a White House call for a "privacy bill of rights" that would give people greater control over their data.
The "privacy bill of rights" is "an important step toward fostering a culture of trust and respect of privacy," said Commerce Secretary John Bryson.
Amid the expressions of support for Internet users' privacy there was tension between consumer and industry groups, which will be jockeying to have any legislation or "do not track" efforts reflect their interests.
Yahoo said it is most interested in having the online advertising industry continue its efforts to police itself, rather than getting regulators involved. "It is also critical that self-regulatory structure play a large and growing role within these frameworks," Yahoo said. "Once again, industry's proactive efforts on privacy have raised the bar."
Other industry players said "do not track" controls should be more than a simple button and should tell consumers about the benefits of data collection. Users should be told that choosing "do not track" button can mean "some data may still be collected," the Digital Advertising Alliance said.
Consumer groups said they are concerned that Web companies will be able to dominate the discussions on privacy settings that are set to take place over the coming months. They worry that ad industry representatives will derail "do not track" efforts already under way at the World Wide Web consortium, which sets international standards for Web software.
"We should not allow 'do not track' to be hijacked by the data collection industry," said Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy. Mr. Chester said he is particularly worried that "do not track" will prevent the delivery of behaviorally targeted ads but continue to allow companies to collect data about users.
Some legislators said they would work to make sure the "privacy bill of rights" is enforceable. "Voluntary, self-regulatory efforts aren't a substitute for laws that keep consumers information safe from prying eyes," said U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.).
Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz said "do not track" initiatives are "still a work in progress" but that the FTC is committed to making sure the moves offer effective protections for consumers. "In America, personal privacy is a right," he said.
-
Sent to me by an occasionally reliable source:
==================
February 29, 2012 by Sam Rolley
Remember the controversy over the past couple of months surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) that was seemingly quelled by the protest of thousands of Internet users and the subsequent blackout of several major websites? Though the tweets, posts and online news stories regarding Internet freedom have waned greatly, the threat to freedom and any level of online privacy persists.
Perhaps it is a product of our always-on news cycle or our constant bombardment with entertainment distractions, but Americans as a whole have a very short attention span when it comes to fighting against threats to our liberty. When lawmakers such as Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas) — author of SOPA — draft legislation that deliberately takes away Americans’ freedom and privacy, they do so with a plan.
Smith and his legislative cohorts knew very well that SOPA and PIPA, two bills that screamed censorship and the antithesis of American values, would make American Internet users and free-speech advocates uneasy; that’s why the Texas legislator drafted a backup bill. The bill’s alphabet-soup acronym is PCFIPA (H.R. 1981), which stands for something that all Americans would likely support “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers.” By amending existing laws that give U.S. Marshals the power to issue subpoenas and pursue fugitives, the bill will give Federal authorities access to your every move when using the Internet or Internet-based device. That’s every email, click, text message, password, online financial transaction, etc.
Internet service providers (ISPs) already keep track of some information, but Smith’s bill requires the ISP to retain every move of every individual using the Internet for 18 months, according to IT World. This means that the Feds would have an ever-evolving pool of data pertaining to every Internet-using American to bait with the thousands of Federal laws and regulations on the books and fish until they find some semblance of criminal activity.
Smith — like any good bureaucrat — is using child pornography as a straw man to impose tyranny. By assuming that every American is a child pornographer, the bill compiles a list of every online action and makes every person guilty until proven innocent.
IT World says of the bill: “Since it is empowering U.S. Marshals to investigate people who have not yet been convicted, under PCFIPA, the only thing required to get a valid subpoena to examine all the online activity of 99.762 percent of the U.S. population, is an investigating officer willing to say the subpoena has something to do with investigation of online child porn.”
“The bill is mislabeled,” Representative John Conyers (D-MI) told CNET. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”
SOPA, PIPA and PCFIPA are all pretty nasty attempts by the U.S. government to unleash its crushing regulatory power on the Internet, but there is another threat to internet freedom and privacy. Critics of the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) say the agreement has all of the markers of an evil plot in a movie based on a group of world leaders and corporate interests bent on eliminating communication among their proles to control all production, communication and information. ACTA is supposed to be an international agreement that protects copyright holders against piracy by establishing an international legal framework for targeting counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet. The law would use an international organization — such as the World Trade Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization or the United Nations — to carry out its task.
ACTA has not been widely discussed in U.S. media, likely because negotiations regarding the measure were held in secret. It was signed quietly by the United States in October 2011 without the approval of Congress, the Supreme Court or the American public. Tokyo, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea also signed the treaty, while the European Union, Mexico and Switzerland plan to do so in the near future, according to International Business Times. When the measure is finalized, ACTA can be used to crack down on Internet activity worldwide by a coordinated authority that rests outside of any country.
Governments aren’t the only ones who want access to everything you do online. With the advent of a new Google privacy policy on March 1, information from almost all of your Google services — including Gmail, Picasa, YouTube and search — will be compiled and analyzed so that the company can learn more about you. Google collects and can integrate just about anything you’ve ever told the company: calendar appointments, location data, search preferences, contacts, personal habits based on Gmail chatter, device information and search queries among other things. There is no way to opt out of the company’s tracking aside from not using any of its products.
If you’re concerned about Internet freedom and privacy, don’t worry, President Barack Obama has your back — much like he did when it came to the indefinite detention provision in the National Defense Authorization Act. Last week, the Administration issued a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” and said that individuals should be allowed to opt out of corporate Internet tracking. No word yet on whether the White House will call for the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, U.S. Marshals or international spy agencies to allow Internet users to opt out of tracking by Big Brother anytime soon. Our guess is likely not.
-
"If you are a citizen, and using force against a LEO, the odds of this turning out well for you is slim and none."
With this I completely agree. And court decisions that gut the 4th amendment protections offered in the Bill of Rights, a series of amendments made becuase of the fear of an over reaching government, don't help this.
An update on a heated discussion from nearly a year ago: http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=38839
"The text of SB 1 states that its legislative purpose "is to protect citizens from unlawful entry into their homes by law enforcement officers or persons pretending to be law enforcement officers. Both citizens and law enforcement officers benefit from clear guidance about the parameters of lawful home entry, which will reduce the potential for violence and respect the privacy and property of citizens."
To that end, the bill recognizes that an individual 'may use force … to prevent or terminate a law enforcement officer’s unlawful entry.'" ...
"SB1 is not an innovation; it simply restores an explicit understanding of Indiana’s "castle doctrine," which was subverted last year in the Indiana State Supreme Court’s Barnes v. State ruling. As a wire service report observed at the time, that ruling effectively nullified the core protections contained in the Fourth Amendment and the equivalent provision in the Indiana constitution, as well as protections and immunities recognized by "common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215." The 3–2 decision last May 12 held that Indiana residents have no right to obstruct unlawful police incursions into their homes."
-
"You have men and women in your community who are willing to die for you, willing to die for your family," insisted Lawson, who – as a former police officer herself – spoke on behalf of 15,000 members of the police union. The only suitable way to display proper gratitude to the heroic paladins of public order, according to Lawson, is to protect their purported authority to invade your home and kill you with impunity – a privilege that would be undermined by SB 1.
Hey, great news source. I'd admit that it's still less biased than the MSM though....
-
The source doesn't matter much, GM. The fact that the state legislature is considering overturning the bill is the issue.
But, if you prefer, here is the legislative history: http://e-lobbyist.com/gaits/IN/SB0001
Here is a story noting the involvement of Indiana GOP and the NRA: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/03/02/indiana-house-approves-bill-that-allows-homeowners-to-kill-police-officers/
Here is the bill information itself, from the Indiana legislture's website: http://www.in.gov/apps/lsa/session/billwatch/billinfo?year=2012&session=1&request=getBill&doctype=SB&docno=0001
-
Hey, if the state doesn't want law enforcement officers to make entry into a residence without a warrant, fine.
You'll find most cops can do as little as the public wants them to do. The public lives with the end result. If that means patrol officers sit outside a home while a victim screams for help while an officer types up a search warrant affidavit and drives to a judge's home to have it signed. Fine. Perhaps it's now a murder case rather than a misd. dv case by the time there is a valid warrant. I guess the public understands that there will be a cost involved.
-
Great citations BD. I love having this level of specificity contributed to conversations. It would help in finding it down the road if you were to use the Subject line to describe the post with some sort of specificity that would aid future Search commands.
-
Pravda on the Hudson tries staining Romney with Bain Capital blind trust investments.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/world/asia/bain-capital-tied-to-surveillance-push-in-china.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fpolitics%2Findex.jsonp
I would submit the real story here is that this surveillance is exactly the sort of thing a totalitarian state would do. It is a major part of the reason Buzwardo, others here, and I oppose this while our GM stays within a feedback loop that, while logical in and of itself, is oblvious to this fundamental reality.
-
Pravda on the Hudson tries staining Romney with Bain Capital blind trust investments.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/world/asia/bain-capital-tied-to-surveillance-push-in-china.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fpolitics%2Findex.jsonp
I would submit the real story here is that this surveillance is exactly the sort of thing a totalitarian state would do. It is a major part of the reason Buzwardo, others here, and I oppose this while our GM stays within a feedback loop that, while logical in and of itself, is oblvious to this fundamental reality.
Uh yeah, there was no surveillance or oppression in China until they got ahold of cameras. :roll:
Know what the Chinese Ministry of State Security used before computers? Typewriters! Know who else had typewriters? The nazis! Typewriters obviously lead to totalitarian oppression.
-
That's very funny!
It is also cognitively dissonant coming from a man so thoroughly well-informed about the horrors of our current President and the coalition of forces that has coalesced around him seeking to take down America as we know it.
-
So I guess we should focus on intent rather than technology?
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/spring-break-gets-tamer-as-world-watches-online.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
KEY WEST, Fla. — Ah, Spring Break, with its copious debauchery, its spontaneous bouts of breast-baring, Jager bombing and après-binge vomit.
In this era of “Jersey Shore” antics and “Girls Gone Wild,” where bikini tops vanish like unattended wallets, it would seem natural to assume that this generation of college student has outdone the spring break hordes of decades past on the carousal meter.
But today’s spring breakers — at least some of them — say they have been tamed, in part, not by parents or colleges or the fed-up cities they invade, but by the hand-held gizmos they hold dearest and the fear of being betrayed by an unsavory, unsanctioned photo or video popping up on Facebook or YouTube.
Heartbreak! :cry:
-
"So I guess we should focus on intent rather than technology?"
Actually , , , NO.
See, in the American Creed concept of government, there is a Constitution which limits the power of the State to certain narrowly defined powers. Also, in the American Creed concept there is a partial listing of rights of the people. Amongst these is the right to own and bear arms precisely so that the people can protect themselves from the tryanny of an overbearing State. Allowing the State to have the ability to track everything you do and say outside of your home is a SERIOUSLY DANGEROUS shift in the balance of power between the people and the State. With this power, the State can, and sooner or later will, destroy Freedom.
-
"So I guess we should focus on intent rather than technology?"
Actually , , , NO.
See, in the American Creed concept of government, there is a Constitution which limits the power of the State to certain narrowly defined powers. Also, in the American Creed concept there is a partial listing of rights of the people. Amongst these is the right to own and bear arms precisely so that the people can protect themselves from the tryanny of an overbearing State. Allowing the State to have the ability to track everything you do and say outside of your home is a SERIOUSLY DANGEROUS shift in the balance of power between the people and the State. With this power, the State can, and sooner or later will, destroy Freedom.
Luckily, the state has nothing approaching this ability in the US.
-
The more the State can monitor everything we do and say (with your unvarying support btw) the less true your statement.
-
The more the State can monitor everything we do and say (with your unvarying support btw) the less true your statement.
Can in theory or actuality? What is your policy solution?
-
If it can, it will. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Solution? Don't put the network up.
-
If it can, it will. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Solution? Don't put the network up.
What network? Will you join CAIR in condemning the NYPD's intelligence unit as well? I'm pretty sure they'd say the same thing on how state power threatens individual freedoms.
-
http://www.cair.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?ArticleID=26935&&name=n&&currPage=1&&Active=1
NYPD Kept Secret Files on Muslim-Owned Businesses
Posted 3/9/2012 12:45:00 PM
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 3/9/12) -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today again called on the Obama administration to address new revelations that the New York Police Department (NYPD) kept secret files on businesses solely because they were owned by Muslims.
CAIR urged the president to speak out against the NYPD's blatant use of religious profiling.
According to the latest revelations by The Associated Press (AP):
"The New York Police Department kept secret files on businesses owned by second- and third-generation Americans specifically because they were Muslims, according to newly obtained documents that spell out in the clearest terms yet that police were monitoring people based on religion. ...
"Police photographed businesses and eavesdropped at lunch counters and inside grocery stores and pastry shops. The resulting document listed no threat. And though most people of Syrian heritage living in the area were Jewish, Jews were excluded from the monitoring. ...
"Similarly, police excluded the city's sizable Coptic Christian population when photographing, monitoring and eavesdropping on Egyptian businesses in 2007, according to the police files."
New NYPD Docs: 'Focus' Scrutiny on Muslim Americans
NYPD Documents Describe 'Focus' on Muslim Americans
NYPD Says Newark Brass Cooperated on Muslims
NJ Mosque Delays FBI Visit Meant to Repair Trust
"It is indisputable that the NYPD is engaged in a widespread campaign of religious profiling targeting the American Muslim community," wrote CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad in a letter to President Obama. "Only direct White House and Justice Department intervention will provide some measure of protection for the constitutional rights of American Muslims."
CAIR recently called on the Obama administration to investigate the reported use of White House funds for the New York Police Department's (NYPD) controversial campaign of spying on Muslims without warrants or evidence of wrongdoing.
CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.
-
By JULIA ANGWIN
Frustrated by a flood of privacy violations, the Federal Trade Commission on Monday issued a strong call for commercial-data collectors to adopt better privacy practices and called for Congress to pass comprehensive privacy legislation.
In a starkly-written 73-page report on privacy in the digital age, the agency called on U.S. commercial data collectors to implement a "Do Not Track" button in Web browsers by the end of the year or to face legislation from Congress forcing the issue.
After a two-year-study, the Federal Trade Commission today called for Congress to pass legislation to protect privacy in the digital era. Julia Angwin reports on digits. Photo: Getty Images.
"Simply put, your computer is your property.No one has the right to put anything on [your computer] that you don't want," said Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the FTC, at a news conference Monday.
The agency also for the first time turned its attention to offline data brokers—which buy and sell names, addresses and other personal information—calling on them to create a centralized website providing consumers with better access to their data. The agency also wants legislation requiring data brokers to give consumers the right to see and make corrections to their information.
Linda Woolley, executive vice president of the Direct Marketing Association, which represents data brokers, said the group opposes giving consumers access to marketing information because it would be expensive, difficult to keep secure and the type of data used by marketers doesn't harm consumers.
• Store data securely, limit collection and retention, and promote data accuracy
• Include a 'Do Not Track' mechanism in Web browsers by the end of the year
• Provide consumers access to data collected about them by data brokers that buy and sell names, addresses and other personal information
"We are very wary about taking the information out of the information economy," Ms. Woolley said.
The FTC doesn't have the authority to write new rules for privacy. Instead, it hopes its report will spur the industry to agree to abide by its voluntary guidelines. The FTC can then use its authority to prosecute "deceptive" behavior if companies that agree to the guidelines don't live up to their promises.
Last month, the FTC notched a win for its guideline approach when the online-advertising industry voluntarily agreed to one of the main privacy recommendations: the development of a "Do Not Track" mechanism that would let users limit Web tracking using a single setting in Web browsing software.
Previously, the industry had urged consumers to individually "opt out" of more than a hundred different companies that track Web browsing behavior.
However, the agreement—which was announced at the White House last month— has been mired in debate about what "Do Not Track" means. The online-ad industry has agreed to what amounts to a "Do Not Target" definition, which would still allow data to be collected for purposes such as market research and product development. Privacy advocates are pushing for it to mean that data won't be collected. An international standards body is working to develop a consensus agreement on the definition of Do Not Track by June.
The Digital Advertising Association, which represents more than 400 companies, said it is pushing ahead to implement its definition of Do Not Track. "We're not at the finish line, but we're pretty close," said the trade group's counsel Stuart P. Ingis.
FTC Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch dissented from the vote approving the report, in part because he said "it is not clear that all the interested players in the Do Not Track arena" will be able to agree on a definition.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577305473061190762.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
-
http://www.cultofmac.com/157641/this-creepy-app-isnt-just-stalking-women-without-their-knowledge-its-a-wake-up-call-about-facebook-privacy/
This Creepy App Isn’t Just Stalking Women Without Their Knowledge, It’s A Wake-Up Call About Facebook Privacy [Update]
95Share26KJohn Brownlee (3:20 pm PDT, Mar 30)
This app is meant to all be in good fun, but it's potentially a weapon in the hands of stalkers.
“Boy, you sure have a lot of apps on your phone.”
“Well, it’s my job.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“Oh, I couldn’t choose. But hey, want to see one to set your skin crawling?”
It was the flush end of a pleasurably hot day — 85 degrees in March — and we were all sipping bitter cocktails out in my friend’s backyard, which was both his smoking room, beer garden, viticetum, opossum parlor and barbecue pit. I was enjoying the warm dusk with a group of six of my best friends, all of whom seemed interested, except for my girlfriend… who immediately grimaced.
“Girls Around Me? Again?” she scolded. “Don’t show them that.”
She turned to our friends, apologetically.
“He’s become obsessed with this app. It’s creepy.”
I sputtered, I nevered, and I denied it, but it was true. I had become obsessed with Girls Around Me, an app that perfectly distills many of the most worrying issues related to social networking, privacy and the rise of the smartphone into a perfect case study that anyone can understand.
It’s an app that can be interpreted many ways. It is as innocent as it is insidious; it is just as likely to be reacted to with laughter as it is with tears; it is as much of a novelty as it has the potential to be used a tool for rapists and stalkers.
And more than anything, it’s a wake-up call about privacy.
The only way to really explain Girls Around Me to people is to load it up and show them how it works, so I did. I placed my iPhone on the table in front of everyone, and opened the app.
The splash screen elicited laughter all around. It’s such a bitmap paean to the tackiest and most self-parodying of baller “culture”; it might as well be an app Tom Haverford slapped together in Parks And Recreation. But it does, at a glance, sum up what Girls Around Me is all about: a radar overlaid on top of a Google Map, out of which throbs numerous holographic women posing like pole dancers in a perpetual state of undress.
“Okay, so here’s the way the app works,” I explained to my friends.
Girls Around Me is a standard geolocation based maps app, similar to any other app that attempts to alert you to things of interest in your immediate vicinity: whether it be parties, clubs, deals, or what have you. When you load it up, the first thing Girls Around Me does is figure out where you are and load up a Google Map centered around your location. The rest of the interface is very simple: in the top left corner, there’s a button that looks like a radar display, at the right corner, there’s a fuel meter (used to fund the app’s freemium model), and on the bottom left is a button that allows you to specify between whether you’re interested in women, men or both.
It’s when you push the radar button that Girls Around Me does what it says on the tin. I pressed the button for my friends. Immediately, Girls Around Me went into radar mode, and after just a few seconds, the map around us was filled with pictures of girls who were in the neighborhood. Since I was showing off the app on a Saturday night, there were dozens of girls out on the town in our local area.
Girls Around Me's splash screen (left) and geo-maps interface (right). Lots of girls around the MFA.
“Wait… what? Are these girls prostitutes?” one of my friends asked, which given the Matrix-like silhouettes posing on the splash screen was a pretty good question.
“Oh, no,” I replied. “These are just regular girls. See this girl? Her name’s Zoe. She lives on the same street as me and Brittany. She works at a coffee shop, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t moonlight picking up tricks.”
“How does it know where these girls are? Do you know all these girls? Is it plucking data from your address book or something?” another friend asked.
“Not at all. These are all girls with publicly visible Facebook profiles who have checked into these locations recently using Foursquare. Girls Around Me then shows you a map where all the girls in your area trackable by Foursquare area. If there’s more than one girl at a location, you see the number of girls there in a red bubble. Click on that, and you can see pictures of all the girls who are at that location at any given time. The pictures you are seeing are their social network profile pictures.”
“Okay, so they know that their data can be used like this for anyone to see? They’re okay with it? ”
“Probably not, actually. The settings determining how visible your Facebook and Foursquare data is are complicated, and tend to be meaningless to people who don’t really understand issues about privacy,” I explained. “Most privacy settings on social networks default to share everything with everyone, and since most people never change those… well, they end up getting sucked up into apps like this.”
“But they know they’ve checked in, right?”
“Again, not necessarily. Foursquare lets you check other people into a location. If you get checked into Foursquare by a friend without your knowledge and have a publicly visible Facebook profile, you could end up in here.” (Update: Apparently, I wasn’t correct about this. Foursquare does NOT allow you to check other people in with you without their knowledge; I was confusing Foursquare for Facebook, which does offer this functionality. Thanks for the correction, unknown8bit! – JRB)
One of my less computer-affable friends actually went pale, and kept on shooting her boyfriend looks for assurance. A Linux aficionado who was the only person in our group without a Facebook account (and one of the few people I’d ever met who actually endorsed Diaspora), the look he returned was one of comical smugness.
“But wait! It gets worse!” I said, ramping things up.
“So let’s say I’m a bro, looking to go out for a night on the town and pick someone up. Let’s say I’m going to the Independent around the corner, and checking it out ahead of time, I really like the look of this girl Zoe — she looks like a girl I might want to try to get with tonight — so I tap her picture for more information, see what I can find out about here.”
I tapped on Zoe. Girls Around Me quickly loaded up a fullscreen render of her Facebook profile picture. The app then told me where Zoe had last been seen (The Independent) and when (15 minutes ago). A big green button at the bottom reading “Photos & Messaging” just begged to be tapped, and when I did, I was whisked away to Zoe’s Facebook profile.
“Okay, so here’s Zoe. Most of her information is visible, so I now know her full name. I can see at a glance that she’s single, that she is 24, that she went to Stoneham High School and Bunker Hill Community College, that she likes to travel, that her favorite book is Gone With The Wind and her favorite musician is Tori Amos, and that she’s a liberal. I can see the names of her family and friends. I can see her birthday.”
“All of that is visible on Facebook?” one of the other girls in our group asked.
“More, depending on how your privacy settings are configured! For example, I can also look at Zoe’s pictures.”
I tapped on the photo album, and a collection of hundreds of publicly visible photos loaded up. I quickly browsed them.
“Okay, so it looks like Zoe is my kind of girl. From her photo albums, I can see that she likes to party, and given the number of guys she takes photos with at bars and clubs at night, I can deduce that she’s frisky when she’s drunk, and her favorite drink is a frosty margarita. She appears to have recently been in Rome. Also, since her photo album contains pictures she took at the beach, I now know what Zoe looks like in a bikini… which, as it happens, is pretty damn good.”
My girlfriend scowled at me. I assured her Zoe in a bikini was no comparison, and moved on.
“So now I know everything to know about Zoe. I know where she is. I know what she looks like, both clothed and mostly disrobed. I know her full name, her parents’ full names, her brother’s full name. I know what she likes to drink. I know where she went to school. I know what she likes and dislikes. All I need to do now is go down to the Independent, ask her if she remembers me from Stoneham High, ask her how her brother Mike is doing, buy her a frosty margarita, and start waxing eloquently about that beautiful summer I spent in Roma.”
The Girls of Girls Around Me. It's doubtful any of these girls even know they are being tracked. Their names and locations have been obscured for privacy reasons.
Throughout this demonstration, my group of friends had been split pretty evenly along gender lines in their reactions. Across the board, the men either looked amused or (in the case of my beardo Diaspora friend) philosophically pleased with themselves about their existing opinions about social networking. The women, on the other hand, looked sick and horrified.
It was at this point, though, that the tendrils of the girls’ unease — their deeply empathic sense of someone being unsafe — seemed to creep through the entire group.
“And if that doesn’t work on Zoe,” I concluded, consulting the app one last time. “There are — let’s see — nine other girls at the Independent tonight.”
Often times, a writer uses tricks and exaggerations to convey to a reader the spirit — if not the precise truth — of what occurred. I just want to make clear that when I say that one of my friends was actually on the verge of tears, you understand that this is not such a trick. She was horrified to the point of crying.
“How can Apple let people download an app like this?” she asked. “And have you written about this?”
In answer to the first question, I replied that as sleazy as this app seemed, Girls Around Me wasn’t actually doing anything wrong. Sure, on the surface, it looks like a hook-up app like Grindr for potential stalkers and date rapists, but all that Girls Around Me is really doing is using public APIs from Google Maps, Facebook and Foursquare and mashing them all up together, so you could see who had checked-in at locations in your area, and learn more about them. Moreover, the girls (and men!) shown in Girls Around Me all had the power to opt out of this information being visible to strangers, but whether out of ignorance, apathy or laziness, they had all neglected to do so. This was all public information. Nothing Girls Around Me does violates any of Apple’s policies.
In fact, Girls Around Me wasn’t even the real problem.
“It’s not, really, that we’re all horrified by what this app does, is it?” I asked, finishing my drink. “It’s that we’re all horrified by how exposed these girls are, and how exposed services like Facebook and Foursquare let them be without their knowledge.”
But I didn’t have an easy answer ready for my friend’s last question. I’d been playing with the app for almost two months. Why hadn’t I written about it? None of the answers made me look good.
Part of it was because, like many tech professionals, I had taken for granted that people understood that their Facebook profiles and Foursquare data were publicly visible unless they explicitly said otherwise… and like my beardo Diaspora friend, I secretly believed that people who were exposed this way on the Internet without their knowledge were foolish.
That made Girls Around Me a funny curio, a titillating novelty app, the kind of thing you pulled out with your buddies at the bar to laugh about… and maybe secretly wish had been around when you were younger and single and trying to pull some action. And if I’d written a post about it a month ago, it would have probably been from that angle. The headline might well have been: “No More Sausage Fests With Girls Around Me [Humor]”
It was in just this spirit that I’d shown off the app to my friends in the first place. It was getting late, we were all drunk or on the verge of getting there, and it had been a perfect day. It would have been so nice to finish things with a laugh. But now, as six intelligent, sophisticated friends from a variety of backgrounds surrounded me — some looking sick, some looking angry, and some with genuine fear in their faces — I didn’t think Girls Around Me was so funny. It had cast a pall across a beautiful day, and it had made people I loved feel scared… not just for the people they loved, but for complete strangers.
So I’m writing about it now. Not because Girls Around Me is an evil app that should be pulled from the iOS App Store, or because the company that makes it — Moscow-based i-Free — is filled with villains. I still don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with what this app is doing, and the guys at i-Free are super nice, and certainly don’t mean for this app to be anything beyond a diversion. So, the reason I’m writing about Girls Around Me is because I finally know what to say about it, and what it means in the greater picture.
Girls Around Me isn’t an app you should use to pick up girls, or guys for that matter. This is an app you should download to teach the people you care about that privacy issues are real, that social networks like Facebook and Foursquare expose you and the ones you love, and that if you do not know exactly how much you are sharing, you are as easily preyed upon as if you were naked. I can think of no better way to get a person to realize that they should understand their Facebook privacy settings then pulling out this app.
That’s why I hope you’ll go download Girls Around Me on your iPhone or iPad. It’s free to download. Show it to someone. Give them the same demo I gave to my friends. Then, when they ask how it’s done and how they can prevent an app like Girls Around Me from tracking them, educate them about privacy.
Here’s a good place to start.
Update: In response to this story, Foursquare has killed Girls Around Me’s API access to their data, effectively knocking the app out of commission. For more details and a statement from Foursquare, read here.
-
Police routinely using phone tracking
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/police-tracking-of-cellphones-raises-privacy-fears.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120401
WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.
The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.
With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels.
But civil liberties advocates say the wider use of cell tracking raises legal and constitutional questions, particularly when the police act without judicial orders. While many departments require warrants to use phone tracking in nonemergencies, others claim broad discretion to get the records on their own, according to 5,500 pages of internal records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union from 205 police departments nationwide.
The internal documents, which were provided to The New York Times, open a window into a cloak-and-dagger practice that police officials are wary about discussing publicly. While cell tracking by local police departments has received some limited public attention in the last few years, the A.C.L.U. documents show that the practice is in much wider use — with far looser safeguards — than officials have previously acknowledged.
The issue has taken on new legal urgency in light of a Supreme Court ruling in January finding that a Global Positioning System tracking device placed on a drug suspect’s car violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches. While the ruling did not directly involve cellphones — many of which also include GPS locators — it raised questions about the standards for cellphone tracking, lawyers say.
The police records show many departments struggling to understand and abide by the legal complexities of cellphone tracking, even as they work to exploit the technology.
In cities in Nevada, North Carolina and other states, police departments have gotten wireless carriers to track cellphone signals back to cell towers as part of nonemergency investigations to identify all the callers using a particular tower, records show.
In California, state prosecutors advised local police departments on ways to get carriers to “clone” a phone and download text messages while it is turned off.
In Ogden, Utah, when the Sheriff’s Department wants information on a cellphone, it leaves it up to the carrier to determine what the sheriff must provide. “Some companies ask that when we have time to do so, we obtain court approval for the tracking request,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a written response to the A.C.L.U.
And in Arizona, even small police departments found cell surveillance so valuable that they acquired their own tracking equipment to avoid the time and expense of having the phone companies carry out the operations for them. The police in the town of Gilbert, for one, spent $244,000 on such equipment.
Cell carriers, staffed with special law enforcement liaison teams, charge police departments from a few hundred dollars for locating a phone to more than $2,200 for a full-scale wiretap of a suspect, records show.
Most of the police departments cited in the records did not return calls seeking comment. But other law enforcement officials said the legal questions were outweighed by real-life benefits.
The police in Grand Rapids, Mich., for instance, used a cell locator in February to find a stabbing victim who was in a basement hiding from his attacker.
“It’s pretty valuable, simply because there are so many people who have cellphones,” said Roxann Ryan, a criminal analyst with Iowa’s state intelligence branch. “We find people,” she said, “and it saves lives.”
Page 2 of 2)
Many departments try to keep cell tracking secret, the documents show, because of possible backlash from the public and legal problems. Although there is no evidence that the police have listened to phone calls without warrants, some defense lawyers have challenged other kinds of evidence gained through warrantless cell tracking.
“Do not mention to the public or the media the use of cellphone technology or equipment used to locate the targeted subject,” the Iowa City Police Department warned officers in one training manual. It should also be kept out of police reports, it advised.
In Nevada, a training manual warned officers that using cell tracing to locate someone without a warrant “IS ONLY AUTHORIZED FOR LIFE-THREATENING EMERGENCIES!!” The practice, it said, had been “misused” in some standard investigations to collect information the police did not have the authority to collect.
“Some cell carriers have been complying with such requests, but they cannot be expected to continue to do so as it is outside the scope of the law,” the advisory said. “Continued misuse by law enforcement agencies will undoubtedly backfire.”
Another training manual prepared by California prosecutors in 2010 advises police officials on “how to get the good stuff” using cell technology.
The presentation said that since the Supreme Court first ruled on wiretapping law in 1928 in a Prohibition-era case involving a bootlegger, “subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government.”
Technological breakthroughs, it continued, have made it possible for the government “to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.”
In interviews, lawyers and law enforcement officials agreed that there was uncertainty over what information the police are entitled to get legally from cell companies, what standards of evidence they must meet and when courts must get involved.
A number of judges have come to conflicting decisions in balancing cellphone users’ constitutional privacy rights with law enforcement’s need for information.
In a 2010 ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, said a judge could require the authorities to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before demanding cellphone records or location information from a provider. (A similar case from Texas is pending in the Fifth Circuit.)
“It’s terribly confusing, and it’s understandable, when even the federal courts can’t agree,” said Michael Sussman, a Washington lawyer who represents cell carriers. The carriers “push back a lot” when the police urgently seek out cell locations or other information in what are purported to be life-or-death situations, he said. “Not every emergency is really an emergency.”
Congress and about a dozen states are considering legislative proposals to tighten restrictions on the use of cell tracking.
While cell tracing allows the police to get records and locations of users, the A.C.L.U. documents give no indication that departments have conducted actual wiretapping operations — listening to phone calls — without court warrants required under federal law.
Much of the debate over phone surveillance in recent years has focused on the federal government and counterterrorism operations, particularly a once-secret program authorized by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks. It allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls of terrorism suspects and monitor huge amounts of phone and e-mail traffic without court-approved intelligence warrants.
Clashes over the program’s legality led Congress to broaden the government’s eavesdropping powers in 2008. As part of the law, the Bush administration insisted that phone companies helping in the program be given immunity against lawsuits.
Since then, the wide use of cell surveillance has seeped down to even small, rural police departments in investigations unrelated to national security.
“It’s become run of the mill,” said Catherine Crump, an A.C.L.U. lawyer who coordinated the group’s gathering of police records. “And the advances in technology are rapidly outpacing the state of the law.”
-
This appeared in my email box. Anyone know anything about this?
Campaign for Liberty
Dear Marc F.,
This coming week, Congress is set to take up another so-called
"cybersecurity" bill, H.R. 3523, the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing
and Protection Act of 2011" (CISPA).
And this time, many of those who joined us to stop SOPA and PIPA
are supporting this legislation.
So only the immediate action of you and your fellow C4L members
can help protect our privacy from the government's ever-expanding
reach.
After our victory over SOPA/PIPA, I wrote to you in late February
about the need to stay vigilant against Congress' attempts to
assert more control over the Internet.
Well, since then, Republicans and Democrats have introduced at
least four major "cybersecurity" bills.
Expanding government power is always bipartisan.
CISPA, sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers (MI-8), is promoted as a
harmless bill that will enable voluntary "information sharing"
between private corporations and government agencies in the name
of "cybersecurity."
Unfortunately, it would allow the transfer of vast amounts of
data, including information like your Internet browsing history
or email content, to any agency in the federal government,
including non-civilian agencies such as the National Security
Agency or the Department of Defense Cyber Command.
One major problem with these alleged "cybersecurity" bills is
their overly broad focus on what information private companies
are encouraged to share with federal agencies.
CISPA currently contains no incentive for private companies like
Facebook or Google to remove personally identifiable information
from data they share.
In addition, the way this legislation is drafted, it currently
overrides privacy presumptions found in the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, and the Communications Act regarding the privacy of an
individual's online communications and related records.
Essentially, CISPA would deem all existing privacy laws null and
void for "cybersecurity" purposes.
Once the government has this information, there are no meaningful
restrictions on its use, as its only qualifier is that it must be
related to "cybersecurity" or to protect "national security."
As C4L members know too well, "national security" has become a
catch-all excuse for government powergrabs since 9/11.
Finally, while the bill includes a requirement for the Director
of National Intelligence's Inspector General to issue annual
reports on how the government is using the information shared
under the bill, such reports would only be provided to
congressional intelligence committees.
These reports would not constitute meaningful restrictions or do
anything to dissuade the misuse of personal information shared
under CISPA.
As I hinted at earlier, unlike the January 18 "Internet blackout"
over SOPA and PIPA, this time Internet giants like Facebook and
Twitter are openly supporting CISPA, along with powerful special
interest groups like the US Chamber of Commerce.
In other words, don't expect the cavalry to back us up on this
one.
And House Leadership is currently engaged in a full-court press
effort to get your representative to support H.R. 3523.
Sources on the Hill have informed us of "members only" meetings,
where representatives are being encouraged to vote for CISPA as a
"national security" issue addressing a "credible" "cybersecurity
threat."
I'm sure it's only a coincidence that this briefing comes
conveniently just ahead of when the establishment wants to ram
something through.
In the face of such longshot odds, without your immediate action,
I can't promise that we have even the slightest chance of beating
back this egregious invasion of your privacy.
But, I've seen the power the liberty movement can have when it
speaks out with a unified voice.
And you better believe members of Congress have taken notice,
too.
That's why I hope you'll contact Congress right away.
Click here to find your representative's information.
http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/8464985:11795247599:m:3:329792902:A6B5B827F80146C5D11AF0037FE3D605:r
And after you've contacted Congress, please forward this email to
at least five friends or family members encouraging them to do
the same.
Finally, your chip-in contribution of at least $10 or $25 will
help Campaign for Liberty mobilize as many Americans as possible
to take action on critical issues like CISPA and other so-called
"cybersecurity" bills that would strip more privacy away from
Americans.
http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/8464986:11795247599:m:3:329792902:A6B5B827F80146C5D11AF0037FE3D605:r
This fight won't have the glamour or media attention that SOPA
and PIPA received, so please take action immediately and show
Congress the liberty movement is serious about defending our
constitutionally protected rights no matter the odds.
In Liberty,
Campaign for Liberty
Matt Hawes
Vice President
P.S. Internet giants like Facebook and Twitter are openly
supporting H.R. 3523, the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and
Protection Act of 2011" (CISPA) - the latest plan from Congress
to further infringe on Americans' privacy.
It's up to the liberty movement to take action and stop CISPA in
its tracks! Please contact your representative immediately and
demand a "NO" vote on H.R. 3523 and any similar legislation!
http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/8464985:11795247599:m:3:329792902:A6B5B827F80146C5D11AF0037FE3D605:r
After you've taken action, please chip in at least $10 or $25 to
help Campaign for Liberty fight this - and any other - outrageous
invasion of our privacy.
http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/8464986:11795247599:m:3:329792902:A6B5B827F80146C5D11AF0037FE3D605:r
This message was intended for: craftydog@dogbrothers.com
You were added to the system February 21, 2012. For more information
click here.
View this email as a web page.
Unsubscribe
http://www.paramountcommunication.com/newsletters/saber/C4L_custom_pref_page.aspx?mhash=2370a6df4e698c3864b263696cd87bcd
----Powered by Paramount Communication----
http://www.paramountcommunication.com
-
but misses relevant SCOTUS case
http://blog.sfgate.com/crime/2012/05/04/smell-of-pot-doesnt-justify-police-break-in-court-says-or-maybe-it-does/?tsp=1
-
The subject of drone use by the police came up on the Bret Baier Report tonight and Charles Krauthammer let rip on drones. Absolutely positively not! He doesn't care that their use would save money! The first person to shoot one down will become a folk hero, even if it takes a bazooka!
Bret Baier "I've never seen you so animated!"
Twas true, CK was quite passionate on the point.
-
I read an article yesterday talking about the security at the London Olympics. The author claims that (many) drones will be employed there, too.
-
Here is something that is causing me some internet difficulty: What are some good search terms or sites to where one can track the actually incidences of direct police action stopping a violent crime. I know that it does happen but, for me, it is not quantifiable.
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/05/23/groups-concerned-over-arming-of-domestic-drones/
Also, I think we should all carefully watch how drones are deployed in the US. First we start with police intel missions. Then what? Using drones for SWAT type actions? And then what? Remember, this is the same country where law enforcement bombed a city block in Philly.
I am concerned that, for law and order types, there is an overdependence on the assumption that people in power will do the right thing. The more the balance of power shifts in favor of those that want to control society, the more opportunity there is for something outlandish to happen.
-
"Sam Sutter, the district attorney in Bristol County, Mass., called ShotSpotter “an extremely valuable tool” that had helped his office bring charges in four nonfatal shootings. In my view legally,” he said, “what is said and picked up by the ShotSpotter recording does not have the expectation of privacy because it’s said out in public, and so I think that will turn out to be admissible evidence.”
What is being asserted here it that the government can film and record us any and everywhere.
Anyone here comfortable with that?
=========================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/us/shots-heard-pinpointed-and-argued-over.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120529
========================
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — At 7:22:07 p.m. on a recent Thursday, an electronic alarm went off in the soundproof control room of a suburban office building here.
A technician quickly focused on the computer screen, where the words “multiple gunshots” appeared in large type. She listened to a recording of the shots — the tat-tat-tat-tat-tat of five rounds from a small-caliber weapon — and zoomed in on a satellite map to see where the gun had been fired: North 23rd Street in Milwaukee, 2,200 miles away.
At 7:23:48, the technician, satisfied that the sounds were gunshots, sent an alert to the Milwaukee Police Department. Less than two minutes later, or at 9:25:02 p.m. Wisconsin time, a tactical team arrived at the address to find five .22-caliber shell casings and a bleeding 15-year-old boy who had been shot in the arm. The casings, said Chris Blaszak, a detective assigned to the department’s intelligence fusion center, were found within 17 feet of where the alert had placed the gunman. Total elapsed time: 3 minutes, 55 seconds.
Milwaukee is one of an increasing number of cities around the country — just under 70 to date, including some in the New York area — that are using a gunshot detection system called ShotSpotter to pinpoint the location of gunfire seconds after it occurs. Last year, the company that developed ShotSpotter began offering a more affordable system, and that has brought in new clients and led other cities to consider trying it.
The detection system, which triangulates sound picked up by acoustic sensors placed on buildings, utility poles and other structures, is part of a wave of technological advances that is transforming the way police officers do their jobs.
But like other technologies, including license plate scanners, body cameras and GPS trackers, the gunshot-detection system has also inspired debate.
In at least one city, New Bedford, Mass., where sensors recorded a loud street argument that accompanied a fatal shooting in December, the system has raised questions about privacy and the reach of police surveillance, even in the service of reducing gun violence.
And with recession-plagued police departments having to cut personnel and services, some cities have questioned the system’s benefits relative to its cost. The Detroit City Council last year rejected the Police Department’s proposal for a three-year, $2.6 million contract, with one council member objecting that not enough officers were available to respond to the alerts.
Cities that installed ShotSpotter in the past bought the equipment and managed the alerts themselves, a model that often involved laying out hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the company now offers a subscription plan for a yearly fee of $40,000 to $60,000 per square mile that includes round-the-clock monitoring of alerts by trained reviewers here in Mountain View.
Many police officials say the system has significantly improved response time for crimes involving firearms and has increased community confidence and helped deter gun crime by demonstrating that the police can show up quickly at the right place.
The technology, they say, has given officers critical information about what to expect upon arriving at a crime scene — like whether a gun was fired from a car and if so, how fast and in what direction the car was traveling — and has offered a level of precision in locating gunfire rarely afforded by 911 calls.
Sgt. Chris Bolton of the Oakland, Calif., Police Department, which has installed ShotSpotter in high-crime neighborhoods in East and West Oakland, said that before the system was in place, “a patrol officer would receive a gunshot call from the community and you could spend up to 30 minutes driving within, I would say, three to four blocks of that location, just to make sure there isn’t a victim in need of assistance, a crime ongoing or any evidence.”
If nothing else, ShotSpotter has made it clear how much unreported gunfire takes place on city streets. In many high-crime urban neighborhoods, gunshots are a counterpoint to daily life, “as common as the birds chirping,” as Cmdr. Mikail Ali of the San Francisco Police Department put it.
But whether out of apathy, fear or uncertainty, people call the police in only a fraction of cases.
In the Bayview-Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco, for example, where one square mile is covered by ShotSpotter sensors, only 10 percent of the verified incidents of gunfire detected by the system were accompanied by 911 calls, Commander Ali said. In Oakland, Sergeant Bolton said, only 22 percent of the verified gunfire the system detected over a three-month period was also reported by residents.
Chief Chris Magnus of Richmond, Calif., a community of 120,000 north of Berkeley that routinely ranks among country’s most violent cities, recalled listening to a ShotSpotter recording of a gun battle in 2010 that involved more than 100 rounds fired from four guns.
“It was just mind-boggling,” he said. “This is like 11 at night on a summer night, and nobody even called it in.”
The technology was developed in the 1990s by Robert Showen, an engineer who hoped it might help address an increase in gun-related homicides in East Palo Alto, Calif. As it has evolved, it has become more accurate, the company says, with fewer false positives and false negatives. The challenge for the system is to distinguish rounds of gunfire from other sharp noises like backfires, firecrackers or the thwap-thwap-thwap of a helicopter’s propeller. ShotSpotter’s alerts label the recorded event and attach a probability that the identification is correct.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/us/shots-heard-pinpointed-and-argued-over.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120529
========================
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — At 7:22:07 p.m. on a recent Thursday, an electronic alarm went off in the soundproof control room of a suburban office building here.
A technician quickly focused on the computer screen, where the words “multiple gunshots” appeared in large type. She listened to a recording of the shots — the tat-tat-tat-tat-tat of five rounds from a small-caliber weapon — and zoomed in on a satellite map to see where the gun had been fired: North 23rd Street in Milwaukee, 2,200 miles away.
At 7:23:48, the technician, satisfied that the sounds were gunshots, sent an alert to the Milwaukee Police Department. Less than two minutes later, or at 9:25:02 p.m. Wisconsin time, a tactical team arrived at the address to find five .22-caliber shell casings and a bleeding 15-year-old boy who had been shot in the arm. The casings, said Chris Blaszak, a detective assigned to the department’s intelligence fusion center, were found within 17 feet of where the alert had placed the gunman. Total elapsed time: 3 minutes, 55 seconds.
Milwaukee is one of an increasing number of cities around the country — just under 70 to date, including some in the New York area — that are using a gunshot detection system called ShotSpotter to pinpoint the location of gunfire seconds after it occurs. Last year, the company that developed ShotSpotter began offering a more affordable system, and that has brought in new clients and led other cities to consider trying it.
The detection system, which triangulates sound picked up by acoustic sensors placed on buildings, utility poles and other structures, is part of a wave of technological advances that is transforming the way police officers do their jobs.
But like other technologies, including license plate scanners, body cameras and GPS trackers, the gunshot-detection system has also inspired debate.
In at least one city, New Bedford, Mass., where sensors recorded a loud street argument that accompanied a fatal shooting in December, the system has raised questions about privacy and the reach of police surveillance, even in the service of reducing gun violence.
And with recession-plagued police departments having to cut personnel and services, some cities have questioned the system’s benefits relative to its cost. The Detroit City Council last year rejected the Police Department’s proposal for a three-year, $2.6 million contract, with one council member objecting that not enough officers were available to respond to the alerts.
Cities that installed ShotSpotter in the past bought the equipment and managed the alerts themselves, a model that often involved laying out hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the company now offers a subscription plan for a yearly fee of $40,000 to $60,000 per square mile that includes round-the-clock monitoring of alerts by trained reviewers here in Mountain View.
Many police officials say the system has significantly improved response time for crimes involving firearms and has increased community confidence and helped deter gun crime by demonstrating that the police can show up quickly at the right place.
The technology, they say, has given officers critical information about what to expect upon arriving at a crime scene — like whether a gun was fired from a car and if so, how fast and in what direction the car was traveling — and has offered a level of precision in locating gunfire rarely afforded by 911 calls.
Sgt. Chris Bolton of the Oakland, Calif., Police Department, which has installed ShotSpotter in high-crime neighborhoods in East and West Oakland, said that before the system was in place, “a patrol officer would receive a gunshot call from the community and you could spend up to 30 minutes driving within, I would say, three to four blocks of that location, just to make sure there isn’t a victim in need of assistance, a crime ongoing or any evidence.”
If nothing else, ShotSpotter has made it clear how much unreported gunfire takes place on city streets. In many high-crime urban neighborhoods, gunshots are a counterpoint to daily life, “as common as the birds chirping,” as Cmdr. Mikail Ali of the San Francisco Police Department put it.
But whether out of apathy, fear or uncertainty, people call the police in only a fraction of cases.
In the Bayview-Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco, for example, where one square mile is covered by ShotSpotter sensors, only 10 percent of the verified incidents of gunfire detected by the system were accompanied by 911 calls, Commander Ali said. In Oakland, Sergeant Bolton said, only 22 percent of the verified gunfire the system detected over a three-month period was also reported by residents.
Chief Chris Magnus of Richmond, Calif., a community of 120,000 north of Berkeley that routinely ranks among country’s most violent cities, recalled listening to a ShotSpotter recording of a gun battle in 2010 that involved more than 100 rounds fired from four guns.
“It was just mind-boggling,” he said. “This is like 11 at night on a summer night, and nobody even called it in.”
The technology was developed in the 1990s by Robert Showen, an engineer who hoped it might help address an increase in gun-related homicides in East Palo Alto, Calif. As it has evolved, it has become more accurate, the company says, with fewer false positives and false negatives. The challenge for the system is to distinguish rounds of gunfire from other sharp noises like backfires, firecrackers or the thwap-thwap-thwap of a helicopter’s propeller. ShotSpotter’s alerts label the recorded event and attach a probability that the identification is correct.
===============
In the Bayview-Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco, for example, where one square mile is covered by ShotSpotter sensors, only 10 percent of the verified incidents of gunfire detected by the system were accompanied by 911 calls, Commander Ali said. In Oakland, Sergeant Bolton said, only 22 percent of the verified gunfire the system detected over a three-month period was also reported by residents.
Enlarge This Image
Annie Tritt for The New York Times
The system issued an alert about multiple gunshots it detected in Richmond.
Connect With Us on Twitter
Follow @NYTNational for breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and Editors
.Enlarge This Image
Annie Tritt for The New York Times
A Richmond corner where the system detected gunfire and a man was found shot.
Chief Chris Magnus of Richmond, Calif., a community of 120,000 north of Berkeley that routinely ranks among country’s most violent cities, recalled listening to a ShotSpotter recording of a gun battle in 2010 that involved more than 100 rounds fired from four guns.
“It was just mind-boggling,” he said. “This is like 11 at night on a summer night, and nobody even called it in.”
The technology was developed in the 1990s by Robert Showen, an engineer who hoped it might help address an increase in gun-related homicides in East Palo Alto, Calif. As it has evolved, it has become more accurate, the company says, with fewer false positives and false negatives. The challenge for the system is to distinguish rounds of gunfire from other sharp noises like backfires, firecrackers or the thwap-thwap-thwap of a helicopter’s propeller. ShotSpotter’s alerts label the recorded event and attach a probability that the identification is correct.
A 2006 study of test shots fired at the Charleston Navy Yard, conducted at the company’s request and financed by the National Institute of Justice, found that ShotSpotter correctly detected 99.6 percent of 234 gunshots at 23 firing locations. The system also located 90.9 percent of the shots to within 40 feet.
Still, some criminal justice experts say that how well the technology works and how essential it is to police departments has yet to be proved.
“Whether this will be seen long-term as a short-term law enforcement fad or fundamental to the way police work, that, I think, is the question,” said Peter Scharf, a criminologist at Tulane University. “I don’t think the effectiveness or efficiency arguments have been settled quite yet.”
But Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit group in Washington, said that especially in cities like Richmond, where gun violence is frequent and police response time can make a difference, the use of ShotSpotter makes sense. “I think it’s a real advantage,” he said.
Over the course of several hours on two recent evenings in the control room here in Mountain View, reviewers listened to recordings identified as gunfire, backfire or firecrackers in 13 cities, including Oakland; Panama City, Fla.; Wilmington, N.C.; and Milwaukee. In each case they decided whether an alert was accurate, and those judged to be valid were sent on to the cities’ police departments.
Sgt. Eric Smith of the Richmond Police Department said that in ShotSpotter alerts, he has heard in the background “doors slamming, birds chirping, cars on the highway, horns honking.”
In New Bedford, the ShotSpotter recording of the street argument is likely to play a role in the case against two men, Jonathan Flores and Jason Denison, who are charged with murder in the killing of Michael Pina on Dec. 2.
At a bail hearing in January, an assistant district attorney said the system had recorded arguing and yelling on the corner of Dartmouth and Matthew Streets.
Frank Camera, the lawyer for Mr. Flores, said that if the prosecution used the recording as evidence, the issue of privacy could be raised under the state’s wiretapping statute. Mr. Denison’s lawyer, Kathleen Curley, said she planned to file a motion to that effect on behalf of her client.
Mr. Camera said that whether he, too, would argue that the recording constituted a privacy violation depended on what is on the tape.
In one section, he said, a voice can be heard saying “No, Jason! No, Jason!” — a statement that could help his client — but in other parts the words cannot be easily distinguished. He said he was having the tape enhanced to try to clarify it.
In any case, Mr. Camera said, the new technology is “opening up a whole can of worms.”
“If the police are utilizing these conversations, then the issue is, where does it stop?” he said.
Sam Sutter, the district attorney in Bristol County, Mass., called ShotSpotter “an extremely valuable tool” that had helped his office bring charges in four nonfatal shootings.
“In my view legally,” he said, “what is said and picked up by the ShotSpotter recording does not have the expectation of privacy because it’s said out in public, and so I think that will turn out to be admissible evidence.”
James G. Beldock, a vice president at ShotSpotter, said that the system was not intended to record anything except gunshots and that cases like New Bedford’s were extremely rare. “There are people who perceive that these sensors are triggered by conversations, but that is just patently not true,” he said. “They don’t turn on unless they hear a gunshot.”
-
"Sam Sutter, the district attorney in Bristol County, Mass., called ShotSpotter “an extremely valuable tool” that had helped his office bring charges in four nonfatal shootings. In my view legally,” he said, “what is said and picked up by the ShotSpotter recording does not have the expectation of privacy because it’s said out in public, and so I think that will turn out to be admissible evidence.”
What is being asserted here it that the government can film and record us any and everywhere.
Anyone here comfortable with that?
=========================================
While I am not necessarily "comfortable with that" since I do a lot of photography, I know that if I am in a public place I'm free to shoot away regardless of the subjects objections. I think "in a public place" the basic rule is no expectation or right to privacy. Numerous court cases have supported this position.
That said, I am not real excited about cameras, satellites, etc. recording my every move in public. Others, like my friend argue, "Well, if I do nothing wrong, and it helps prevent crime, why not? It won't affect me."
-
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/30/11949657-report-obama-changes-definition-of-civilian-in-drone-wars?lite
It is often been reported that President Obama has urged officials to avoid wherever possible the deaths of civilians in covert US actions in Pakistan and elsewhere. But reporters Jo Becker and Scott Shane reveal that Obama inserted a loophole.
"Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."
-
A Foreign Policy article related to the above story posted earlier in the day:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/29/where_the_drones_are
Obama's policy of killing by remote control is by no means new. Over the last decade, America's overseas use of drones has expanded exponentially in scope, location, and frequency. Beyond their use across the battlefields of Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq, U.S. drones have been used to target suspected militants and terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, as well as to conduct surveillance missions over Colombia, Haiti, Iran, Mexico, North Korea, the Philippines, Turkey, and beyond.
-
"That said, I am not real excited about cameras, satellites, etc. recording my every move in public. Others, like my friend argue, "Well, if I do nothing wrong, and it helps prevent crime, why not? It won't affect me.""
Hypothetical: How would you feel about someone following you everywhere you go in public, videoing everything you say and do?
============
Regarding Obama: I see that he has David Axelrod in the room with him as he selects his targets. :-P :cry: :x
-
TD: If you take what has been happening in the post-9/11 security world, what you’re see is the establishment of a surveillance society – the establishment of a surveillance network. People don’t realize the extent to which we’re surveilled in many, many ways. The extent to which vast amounts of our transactional data in all forms – electronic forms, your emails, your tweets, bank records and everything else – are all subject or suspect in terms of surveillance. It raises the specter of the rise of so-called “soft tyranny.” It raises the specter of you being automatically suspicious until you prove that you’re not; the specter of a universal and persistent wiretap on every single person. If not – they can create one. Because what happens if they don’t like you? What if you speak ill will against the government? What if you say something they consider disloyal? That is not the country I took an oath to defend four times in my government career.
There is also a fear element. Fear in itself is control. What would people do when they are fearful is they would begin to censor themselves. It sends an extraordinary chilling message that if you speak out – they are going to hammer you hard. Our security has become our state religion, you don’t question it. And if you question it – your loyalty is questioned.
http://www.rt.com/news/america-surveillance-society-drake-697/
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/us/cell-carriers-see-uptick-in-requests-to-aid-surveillance.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120709
More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: July 8, 2012
•
WASHINGTON — In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.
The New York Times
The cellphone carriers’ reports, which come in response to a Congressional inquiry, document an explosion in cellphone surveillance in the last five years, with the companies turning over records thousands of times a day in response to police emergencies, court orders, law enforcement subpoenas and other requests.
The reports also reveal a sometimes uneasy partnership with law enforcement agencies, with the carriers frequently rejecting demands that they considered legally questionable or unjustified. At least one carrier even referred some inappropriate requests to the F.B.I.
The information represents the first time data have been collected nationally on the frequency of cell surveillance by law enforcement. The volume of the requests reported by the carriers — which most likely involve several million subscribers — surprised even some officials who have closely followed the growth of cell surveillance.
“I never expected it to be this massive,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who requested the reports from nine carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, in response to an article in April in The New York Times on law enforcement’s expanded use of cell tracking. Mr. Markey, who is the co-chairman of the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, made the carriers’ responses available to The Times.
While the cell companies did not break down the types of law enforcement agencies collecting the data, they made clear that the widened cell surveillance cut across all levels of government — from run-of-the-mill street crimes handled by local police departments to financial crimes and intelligence investigations at the state and federal levels.
AT&T alone now responds to an average of more than 700 requests a day, with about 230 of them regarded as emergencies that do not require the normal court orders and subpoena. That is roughly triple the number it fielded in 2007, the company said. Law enforcement requests of all kinds have been rising among the other carriers as well, with annual increases of between 12 percent and 16 percent in the last five years. Sprint, which did not break down its figures in as much detail as other carriers, led all companies last year in reporting what amounted to at least 1,500 data requests on average a day.
With the rapid expansion of cell surveillance have come rising concerns — including among carriers — about what legal safeguards are in place to balance law enforcement agencies’ needs for quick data against the privacy rights of consumers.
Legal conflicts between those competing needs have flared before, but usually on national security matters. In 2006, phone companies that cooperated in the Bush administration’s secret program of eavesdropping on suspicious international communications without court warrants were sued, and ultimately were given immunity by Congress with the backing of the courts. The next year, the F.B.I. was widely criticized for improperly using emergency letters to the phone companies to gather records on thousands of phone numbers in counterterrorism investigations that did not involve emergencies.
Under federal law, the carriers said they generally required a search warrant, a court order or a formal subpoena to release information about a subscriber. But in cases that law enforcement officials deem an emergency, a less formal request is often enough. Moreover, rapid technological changes in cellphones have blurred the lines on what is legally required to get data — particularly the use of GPS systems to identify the location of phones.
As cell surveillance becomes a seemingly routine part of police work, Mr. Markey said in an interview that he worried that “digital dragnets” threatened to compromise the privacy of many customers. “There’s a real danger we’ve already crossed the line,” he said.
With the rising prevalence of cellphones, officials at all levels of law enforcement say cell tracking represents a powerful tool to find suspects, follow leads, identify associates and cull information on a wide range of crimes.
“At every crime scene, there’s some type of mobile device,” said Peter Modafferi, chief of detectives for the Rockland County district attorney’s office in New York, who also works on investigative policies and operations with the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The need for the police to exploit that technology “has grown tremendously, and it’s absolutely vital,” he said in an interview.
Page 2 of 2)
The surging use of cell surveillance was also reflected in the bills the wireless carriers reported sending to law enforcement agencies to cover their costs in some of the tracking operations. AT&T, for one, said it collected $8.3 million last year compared with $2.8 million in 2007, and other carriers reported similar increases in billings.
Federal law allows the companies to be reimbursed for “reasonable” costs for providing a number of surveillance operations. Still, several companies maintained that they lost money on the operations, and Cricket, a small wireless carrier that received 42,500 law enforcement requests last year, or an average of 116 a day, complained that it “is frequently not paid on the invoices it submits.”
Because of incomplete record-keeping, the total number of law enforcement requests last year was almost certainly much higher than the 1.3 million the carriers reported to Mr. Markey. Also, the total number of people whose customer information was turned over could be several times higher than the number of requests because a single request often involves multiple callers. For instance, when a police agency asks for a cell tower “dump” for data on subscribers who were near a tower during a certain period of time, it may get back hundreds or even thousands of names.
As cell surveillance increased, warrants for wiretapping by federal and local officials — eavesdropping on conversations — declined 14 percent last year to 2,732, according to a recent report from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
The diverging numbers suggest that law enforcement officials are shifting away from wiretaps in favor of other forms of cell tracking that are generally less legally burdensome, less time consuming and less costly. (Most carriers reported charging agencies between $50 and $75 an hour for cellphone tower “dumps.”)
To handle the demands, most cell carriers reported employing large teams of in-house lawyers, data technicians, phone “cloning specialists” and others around the clock to take requests from law enforcement agencies, review the legality and provide the data.
With the demands so voluminous and systematic, some carriers have resorted to outsourcing the job. Cricket said it turned over its compliance duties to a third party in April. The outside provider, Neustar, said it handled law enforcement compliance for about 400 phone and Internet companies.
But a number of carriers reported that as they sought to balance legitimate law enforcement needs against their customers’ privacy rights, they denied some data demands because they were judged to be overreaching or unauthorized under federal surveillance laws.
Sometimes, the carriers said, they determined that a true emergency did not exist. At other times, police agencies neglected to get the required court orders for surveillance measures, left subpoenas unsigned or failed to submit formal requests.
C Spire Wireless, a small carrier, estimated that of about 12,500 law enforcement demands it received in the last five years, it rejected 15 percent of them in whole or in part. (Most carriers did not provide figures on rejections.)
At TracFone, another small carrier providing prepaid service, an executive told Mr. Markey that the company “shares your concerns regarding the unauthorized tracking of wireless phones by law enforcement with little or no judicial oversight, and I assure you that TracFone does not participate in or condone such unauthorized tracking.”
T-Mobile, meanwhile, said it had sent two law enforcement demands to the F.B.I. because it considered them “inappropriate.” The company declined to provide further details.
Requests from law enforcement officials to identify the location of a particular cellphone using GPS technology have caused particular confusion, carriers said. A Supreme Court ruling in January further muddled the issue when it found that the authorities should have obtained a search warrant before tracking a suspect’s movements by attaching a GPS unit to his car.
Law enforcement officials say the GPS technology built into many phones has proved particularly critical in responding to kidnappings, attempted suicides, shootings, cases of missing people and other emergencies. But Sprint and other carriers called on Congress to set clearer legal standards for turning over location data, particularly to resolve contradictions in the law.
While the carriers said they always required proper legal orders before turning over nonemergency information, their assurances were somewhat at odds with anecdotal evidence recently gathered by the American Civil Liberties Union from more than 200 law enforcement agencies nationwide.
The reports provided to the A.C.L.U. showed that many local and state police agencies claimed broad discretion to obtain cell records without court orders, and that some departments specifically warned officers about the past misuse of cellphone surveillance in nonemergency situations.
Chris Calabrese, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U., said he was concerned not only about officials gathering phone data on people with no real connection to crimes but also about the agencies then keeping those records indefinitely in internal databases.
“The standards really are all over the place,” Mr. Calabrese said. “Nobody is saying don’t use these tools. What we’re saying is do it with consistent standards and in a way that recognizes that these are tools that really can impact people’s privacy.”
-
Truth???
:-o :-o :-o :-o
http://www.neatorama.com/2012/07/11/homeland-securitys-new-molecular-scanner/
-
We are FUCT :cry: :x :x
I followed that link to this one, which is more thorough:
http://gizmodo.com/5923980/the-secret-government-laser-that-instantly-knows-everything-about-you
-
http://www.naturalnews.com/036452_laser_scanner_molecular.html
NaturalNews) Within the next two years, a spooky, powerful and invisible new technology will be deployed by the U.S. government that can instantly scan and identify every molecule on your body or person: the cocaine residue on your dollar bills, prescription drugs in your purse, marijuana in your pocket and even trace powder residue from your practice session at the gun range.
And it can detect all this invisibly, silently, from a range of 50 meters away.
"New Homeland Security Laser Scanner Reads People At Molecular Level" declares a CBS News headline (http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/07/11/new-homeland-security-laser...). "The scanner is called the Picosecond Programmable Laser. The device works by blasting its target with lasers which vibrate molecules that are then read by the machine that determine what substances a person has been exposed to. This could be Semtex explosives to the bacon and egg sandwich they had for breakfast that morning."
Government to log every chemical on your body
These laser detection devices are slated to be widely deployed across airports, roadside checkpoints, sports stadiums and anywhere else the government wants to surveil the public. Data collected by these devices can even be tagged to your identity so that the government compiles a database of which chemicals were detected on you at each location, for each day of your life.
This information, of course, can then be used by the government to target people they call "terrorists" -- anyone who believes in liberty, the Constitution, the founding fathers or limited government. Once nationwide gun confiscation orders are handed down from Washington, these scanning devices can be used to detect trace levels of gunpowder on people merely strolling through a public place. If you're carrying ammunition or have recently practiced with firearms, you'll be flagged, tagged and dragged into the very secret military prisons expanded by President Obama under the National Defense Authorization Act which nullifies due process and the Bill of Rights. (http://www.naturalnews.com/034537_NDAA_Bill_of_Rights_Obama.html)
Into pot instead of guns? Your days of carrying some Mary Jane are over, too, as the government can detect traces of THC on your clothing, hands or facial skin from fifty meters away. It's not limited to marijuana, either: this device can detect and catalog your use of any recreational drugs, including cocaine, heroin, ecstasy or anything.
Not into abusing drugs? Never worry: the government can instantly know what prescription drugs you're using, too. The laser scanning device can catalog what prescription medications you're on and tag your profile with this data. It may even be used against you in court someday -- if you're even allowed your day in court anymore.
You'll be chemically naked at all checkpoints
As Gizmodo reports: (http://gizmodo.com/5923980/the-secret-government-laser-that-instantly...)
The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors were subcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded "in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress." According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.
Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States. The official, stated goal of this arrangement is to be able to quickly identify explosives, dangerous chemicals, or bioweapons at a distance.
The machine is ten million times faster -- and one million times more sensitive -- than any currently available system. That means that it can be used systematically on everyone passing through airport security, not just suspect or randomly sampled people.
Laser scanner penetrates clothing, can even detect chemistry inside your body
If reports are to be believed, this technology can even penetrate clothing and skin, detecting chemical inside your body. On the positive side, this could be a miraculous medical diagnostic device capable of, for example, instantly detecting your level of vitamin D or magnesium. But it won't be used that way, of course. Instead of empowering the People, this technology will be used to enslave them.
In an instant, even without your knowledge, this device will be able to determine what you ate for breakfast, whether you're ovulating, whether you have cancer, how long ago you consumed alcohol, and even how much adrenaline is currently pumping through your veins. Everything about you will be scanned, tracked and logged by the government, then combined with your search engine logs, web surfing habits, mobile phone text records, grocery purchasing habits, credit card records and everything else they have on you to create a total police state profile of your psychology and behavior.
This information will, of course, be used against you to expand the power of the state while crushing independence and liberty. Such is the pattern of all new technology: Spy drones, robotics, nanotech, the internet and so on.
The technology can also be used to selectively arrest and prosecute almost anyone for "possession of cocaine." How? As U.S. court cases have already proven, there is no threshold for drugs below which you cannot be arrested for possession. Thus, even carrying a trace speck of cocaine -- which exists on all currency -- can get you arrested and charged with possession. Since everybody has traces of cocaine on their cash (and on their hands), this technology can be used to selectively arrest and prosecute anyone the government wishes to "put away," even for political reasons. All it takes is a single cocaine molecule on your person and you're flagged as a criminal.
Even CBS news acknowledges the technology could be used by "Big Brother," although they don't explore the horrifying implications of it. Imagine the government knowing your entire biochemistry in an instant, covertly and remotely. They could theoretically even detect who avoids GMOs, fluoride and vaccines, thereby flagging "food freedom terrorists" who deliberately avoid being poisoned by the criminal corporate mafia.
The uses of this technology are endless. And so is its potential for abuse by a mafia police state government that respects no human rights, no law and nothing from the U.S. Constitution.
Sources include:
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/07/11/new-homeland-security-laser...
http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/64572-source-of-anim...
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/036452_laser_scanner_molecular.html#ixzz20SuIRGL5
-
Sent by a not always reliable source:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/14-incredibly-creepy-surveillance-technologies-that-big-brother-will-soon-be-using-to-spy-on-you?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=14-incredibly-creepy-surveillance-technologies-that-big-brother-will-soon-be-using-to-spy-on-you
That Big Brother Will Be Using To Spy On You
Posted: 09 Jul 2012 02:51 PM PDT
Most of us don't think much about it, but the truth is that people are being watched, tracked and monitored more today than at any other time in human history. The explosive growth of technology in recent years has given governments, spy agencies and big corporations monitoring tools that the despots and dictators of the past could only dream of. Previous generations never had to deal with "pre-crime" surveillance cameras that use body language to spot criminals or unmanned drones watching them from far above. Previous generations would have never even dreamed that street lights and refrigerators might be spying on them. Many of the incredibly creepy surveillance technologies that you are about to read about are likely to absolutely astound you. We are rapidly heading toward a world where there will be no such thing as privacy anymore. Big Brother is becoming all-pervasive, and thousands of new technologies are currently being developed that will make it even easier to spy on you. The world is changing at a breathtaking pace, and a lot of the changes are definitely not for the better.
The following are 14 incredibly creepy surveillance technologies that Big Brother will be using to watch you....
#1 "Pre-Crime" Surveillance Cameras
A company known as BRS Labs has developed "pre-crime" surveillance cameras that can supposedly determine if you are a terrorist or a criminal even before you commit a crime.
Does that sound insane?
Well, authorities are taking this technology quite seriously. In fact, dozens of these cameras are being installed at major transportation hubs in San Francisco....In its latest project BRS Labs is to install its devices on the transport system in San Francisco, which includes buses, trams and subways. The company says will put them in 12 stations with up to 22 cameras in each, bringing the total number to 288. The cameras will be able to track up to 150 people at a time in real time and will gradually build up a ‘memory’ of suspicious behaviour to work out what is suspicious.
#2 Capturing Fingerprints From 20 Feet Away
Can you imagine someone reading your fingerprints from 20 feet away without you ever knowing it?
This kind of technology is actually already here according to POPSCI....
Gaining access to your gym or office building could soon be as simple as waving a hand at the front door. A Hunsville, Ala.-based company called IDair is developing a system that can scan and identify a fingerprint from nearly 20 feet away. Coupled with other biometrics, it could soon allow security systems to grant or deny access from a distance, without requiring users to stop and scan a fingerprint, swipe an ID card, or otherwise lose a moment dealing with technology.
Currently IDair’s primary customer is the military, but the startup wants to open up commercially to any business or enterprise that wants to put a layer of security between its facilities and the larger world. A gym chain is already beta testing the system (no more using your roommate’s gym ID to get in a free workout), and IDair’s founder says that at some point his technology could enable purchases to be made biometrically, using fingerprints and irises as unique identifiers rather than credit card numbers and data embedded in magnetic strips or RFID chips.
#3 Mobile Backscatter Vans
Police all over America will soon be driving around in unmarked vans looking inside your cars and even under your clothes using the same "pornoscanner" technology currently being utilized by the TSA at U.S. airports....
American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science & Engineering's Z Backscatter Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA officials call "the amazing radioactive genital viewer," now seen in airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the elderly, and you (yes you).
These pornoscannerwagons will look like regular anonymous vans, and will cruise America's streets, indiscriminately peering through the cars (and clothes) of anyone in range of its mighty isotope-cannon. But don't worry, it's not a violation of privacy. As AS&E's vice president of marketing Joe Reiss sez, "From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be."
You can see a YouTube video presentation about this new technology right here.
#4 Hijacking Your Mind
The U.S. military literally wants to be able to hijack your mind. The theory is that this would enable U.S. forces to non-violently convince terrorists not to be terrorists anymore. But obviously the potential for abuse with this kind of technology is extraordinary. The following is from a recent article by Dick Pelletier....
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to understand the science behind what makes people violent, and then find ways to hijack their minds by implanting false, but believable stories in their brains, with hopes of evoking peaceful thoughts: We’re friends, not enemies.
Critics say this raises ethical issues such as those addressed in the 1971 sci-fi movie, A Clockwork Orange, which attempted to change people’s minds so that they didn’t want to kill anymore.
Advocates, however, believe that placing new plausible narratives directly into the minds of radicals, insurgents, and terrorists, could transform enemies into kinder, gentler citizens, craving friendship.
Scientists have known for some time that narratives; an account of a sequence of events that are usually in chronological order; hold powerful sway over the human mind, shaping a person’s notion of groups and identities; even inspiring them to commit violence. See DARPA proposal request HERE.
#5 Unmanned Drones In U.S. Airspace
Law enforcement agencies all over the United States are starting to use unmanned drones to spy on us, and the Department of Homeland Security is aggressively seeking to expand the use of such drones by local authorities....
The Department of Homeland Security has launched a program to "facilitate and accelerate the adoption" of small, unmanned drones by police and other public safety agencies, an effort that an agency official admitted faces "a very big hurdle having to do with privacy."
The $4 million Air-based Technologies Program, which will test and evaluate small, unmanned aircraft systems, is designed to be a "middleman" between drone manufacturers and first-responder agencies "before they jump into the pool," said John Appleby, a manager in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate's division of borders and maritime security.
The fact that very few Americans seem concerned about this development says a lot about where we are as a nation. The EPA is already using drones to spy on cattle ranchers in Nebraska and Iowa. Will we eventually get to a point where we all just consider it to be "normal" to have surveillance drones flying above our heads constantly?
#6 Law Enforcement Using Your Own Cell Phone To Spy On You
Although this is not new technology, law enforcement authorities are using our own cell phones to spy on us more extensively than ever before as a recent Wired article described....
Mobile carriers responded to a staggering 1.3 million law enforcement requests last year for subscriber information, including text messages and phone location data, according to data provided to Congress.
A single "request" can involve information about hundreds of customers. So ultimately the number of Americans affected by this could reach into "the tens of millions" each year....
The number of Americans affected each year by the growing use of mobile phone data by law enforcement could reach into the tens of millions, as a single request could ensnare dozens or even hundreds of people. Law enforcement has been asking for so-called “cell tower dumps” in which carriers disclose all phone numbers that connected to a given tower during a certain period of time.
So, for instance, if police wanted to try to find a person who broke a store window at an Occupy protest, it could get the phone numbers and identifying data of all protestors with mobile phones in the vicinity at the time — and use that data for other purposes.
Perhaps you should not be using your cell phone so much anyway. After all, there are more than 500 studies that show that cell phone radiation is harmful to humans.
#7 Biometric Databases
All over the globe, governments are developing massive biometric databases of their citizens. Just check out what is going on in India....In the last two years, over 200 million Indian nationals have had their fingerprints and photographs taken and irises scanned, and given a unique 12-digit number that should identify them everywhere and to everyone.
This is only the beginning, and the goal is to do the same with the entire population (1.2 billion), so that poorer Indians can finally prove their existence and identity when needed for getting documents, getting help from the government, and opening bank and other accounts.
This immense task needs a database that can contain over 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs, and 2.4 billion iris scans, can be queried from diverse devices connected to the Internet, and can return accurate results in an extremely short time.
#8 RFID Microchips
In a previous article, I detailed how the U.S. military is seeking to develop technology that would enable it to monitor the health of our soldiers and improve their performance in battle using RFID microchips.
Most Americans don't realize this, but RFID microchips are steadily becoming part of the very fabric of our lives. Many of your credit cards and debit cards contain them. Many Americans use security cards that contain RFID microchips at work. In some parts of the country it is now mandatory to inject an RFID microchip into your pet.
Now, one school system down in Texas actually plans to start using RFID microchips to track the movements of their students....Northside Independent School District plans to track students next year on two of its campuses using technology implanted in their student identification cards in a trial that could eventually include all 112 of its schools and all of its nearly 100,000 students. District officials said the Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) tags would improve safety by allowing them to locate students — and count them more accurately at the beginning of the school day to help offset cuts in state funding, which is partly based on attendance.
#9 Automated License Plate Readers
In a previous article, I quoted a Washington Post piece that talked about how automated license plate readers are being used to track the movements of a vehicle from the time that it enters Washington D.C. to the time that it leaves....
More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.
With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.
#10 Face Reading Software
Can computers tell what you are thinking just by looking at your face? Don't laugh. Such technology is actually being actively developed. The following is from a recent NewScientist article....
IF THE computers we stare at all day could read our faces, they would probably know us better than anyone.
That vision may not be so far off. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab are developing software that can read the feelings behind facial expressions. In some cases, the computers outperform people. The software could lead to empathetic devices and is being used to evaluate and develop better adverts.
#11 Data Mining
The government is not the only one that is spying on you. The truth is that a whole host of very large corporations are gathering every shred of information about you that they possibly can and selling that information for profit. It is called "data mining", and it is an industry that has absolutely exploded in recent years.
One very large corporation known as Acxiom actually compiles information on more than 190 million people in the U.S. alone....The company fits into a category called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools, as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data 'transactions' a year.
#12 Street Lights Spying On Us?
Did you ever consider that street lights could be spying on you?
Well, it is actually happening. New high tech street lights that can actually watch what you do and listen to what you are saying are being installed in some major U.S. cities. The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson for Infowars.com....
Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.
#13 Automated ISP Monitoring Of Your Internet Activity
As I have written about before, nothing you do on the Internet is private. However, Internet Service Providers and the entertainment industry are now taking Internet monitoring to a whole new level.... If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.
Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.
That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.
Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration.
Spying On Us Through Our Appliances
Could the government one day use your refrigerator to spy on you? Don't laugh. That is exactly what CIA Director David Petraeus says is coming....
Petraeus says that web-connected gadgets will 'transform' the art of spying - allowing spies to monitor people automatically without planting bugs, breaking and entering or even donning a tuxedo to infiltrate a dinner party.
'Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,' said Petraeus.
'Particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft. Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters - all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.'
Petraeus was speaking to a venture capital firm about new technologies which aim to add processors and web connections to previously 'dumb' home appliances such as fridges, ovens and lighting systems.
For many more ways that Big Brother is spying on you, please see these articles....
"Every Breath You Take, Every Move You Make – 14 New Ways That The Government Is Watching You"
"30 Signs That The United States Of America Is Being Turned Into A Giant Prison"
The things that I have written about above are just the things that they admit to.
There are also many "black box technologies" being developed out there that the public does not even know about yet.
So how far will all of this go?
Has Big Brother already gone way too far?
--
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; It is because we do not dare that they are difficult. -- Seneca
-
http://www.aele.org/law/2012all07/2012-07MLJ501.pdf
-
It was an interesting and informative read.
-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfEbMV295Kk[/youtube]
Thoughts?
-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJl9EEcsoE[/youtube]
Hmmmm...
-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=melLHbYi2pE[/youtube]
Because...
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/technology/finspy-software-is-tracking-political-dissidents.html
The software proved to be the stuff of a spy film: it can grab images of computer screens, record Skype chats, turn on cameras and microphones and log keystrokes. The two men said they discovered mobile versions of the spyware customized for all major mobile phones.
But what made the software especially sophisticated was how well it avoided detection. Its creators specifically engineered it to elude antivirus software made by Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, F-Secure and others.
The software has been identified as FinSpy, one of the more elusive spyware tools sold in the growing market of off-the-shelf computer surveillance technologies that give governments a sophisticated plug-in monitoring operation. Research now links it to servers in more than a dozen countries, including Turkmenistan, Brunei and Bahrain, although no government acknowledges using the software for surveillance purposes.
-
Marc F. --
There are thousands of tales of “Government Bullies” intruding upon the daily lives and business of ordinary Americans, and my new book exposes these horror stories.
It is meant to set brushfires in the minds of men.
Our Founders envisioned an America in which citizens would bully the government, not the other way around.
This book is my effort to bring that America back.
Please read this exerpt from the Introduction of Government Bullies:
Ronald Reagan famously said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I’m here to help.'"
Three decades later, American life is micromanaged at every imaginable level. Citizens’ basic day to day activities are subject to government scrutiny.
We endure a federal government that has invaded virtually every aspect of our lives—from light bulbs, to toilets, to lemonade stands and beyond.
Our federal government regulates everything and anything. How much water goes into your commode. How much water comes out of your showerhead. The temperature of the water in your washing machine. How many miles to the gallon your car must get.
Americans’ privacy is violated at every turn.
Since the implementation of the Patriot Act, your banking records, your credit card account, your gun registration, and your phone bill have become easy pickings for government snoops, who can do pretty much anything they like with your personal information without the hassle of having to get a warrant.
The government can literally break down your door, seize your property, and even seize you, based on rules and regulations created by unelected bureaucrats with zero accountability.
Congress has abdicated its constitutional role as the federal body that makes laws by allowing agencies like the EPA, FDA, USDA, and TSA to make their own laws through regulations and red tape. These agencies have assumed frightening new powers over the everyday lives of American citizens, giving these government entities free rein over you and me in ways unprecedented in our country’s history.
Our ever-growing nanny state now includes an arsenal of unconstitutional and unprecedented surveillance and law enforcement powers.
These government powers aren’t exactly subtle in action or intent.
Does anyone think a government with thirty-eight armed federal agencies is kidding around? They’re not.
They mean business.
Your business...
So please take a look at Government Bullies today. You can buy it here.
You and I can fight back.
Exposing the horror stories is always the first step.
The more Americans read this book, the more they hear these stories of Government Bullies, the more people we will have on our side in this battle.
Tell your friends about it. Help spread the word of what out of control government regulators are doing to our freedom and our economy.
In Liberty,
Rand Paul
P.S. The book is available through Amazon.com here
-
Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations: Fourth Amendment Implications and Legislative Responses, view at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42701.pdf
-
U.S. Is Tightening Web Privacy Rule to Shield Young
By NATASHA SINGER
Published: September 27, 2012
Federal regulators are about to take the biggest steps in more than a decade to protect children online.
The moves come at a time when major corporations, app developers and data miners appear to be collecting information about the online activities of millions of young Internet users without their parents’ awareness, children’s advocates say. Some sites and apps have also collected details like children’s photographs or locations of mobile devices; the concern is that the information could be used to identify or locate individual children.
These data-gathering practices are legal. But the development has so alarmed officials at the Federal Trade Commission that the agency is moving to overhaul rules that many experts say have not kept pace with the explosive growth of the Web and innovations like mobile apps. New rules are expected within weeks.
“Today, almost every child has a computer in his pocket and it’s that much harder for parents to monitor what their kids are doing online, who they are interacting with, and what information they are sharing,” says Mary K. Engle, associate director of the advertising practices division at the F.T.C. “The concern is that a lot of this may be going on without anybody’s knowledge.”
The proposed changes could greatly increase the need for children’s sites to obtain parental permission for some practices that are now popular — like using cookies to track users’ activities around the Web over time. Marketers argue that the rule should not be changed so extensively, lest it cause companies to reduce their offerings for children.
“Do we need a broad, wholesale change of the law?” says Mike Zaneis, the general counsel for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry association. “The answer is no. It is working very well.”
The current federal rule, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, requires operators of children’s Web sites to obtain parental consent before they collect personal information like phone numbers or physical addresses from children under 13. But rapid advances in technology have overtaken the rules, privacy advocates say.
Today, many brand-name companies and analytics firms collect, collate and analyze information about a wide range of consumer activities and traits. Some of those techniques could put children at risk, advocates say.
Under the F.T.C.’s proposals, some current online practices, like getting children under 13 to submit photos of themselves, would require parental consent.
Children who visit McDonald’s HappyMeal.com, for instance, can “get in the picture with Ronald McDonald” by uploading photos of themselves and combining them with images of the clown. Children may also “star in a music video” on the site by uploading photos or webcam images and having it graft their faces onto dancing cartoon bodies.
But according to children’s advocates, McDonald’s stored these images in directories that were publicly available. Anyone with an Internet connection could check out hundreds of photos of young children, a few of whom were pictured in pajamas in their bedrooms, advocates said.
In a related complaint to the F.T.C. last month, a coalition of advocacy groups accused McDonald’s and four other corporations of violating the 1998 law by collecting e-mail addresses without parental consent. HappyMeal.com, the complaint noted, invites children to share their creations on the site by providing the first names and e-mail addresses of their friends.
“When we tell parents about this they are appalled, because basically what it’s doing is going around the parents’ back and taking advantage of kids’ naïveté,” says Jennifer Harris, the director of marketing initiatives at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, a member of the coalition that filed the complaint. “It’s a very unfair and deceptive practice that we don’t think companies should be allowed to do.”
Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s, said in an e-mail that the company placed a “high importance” on protecting privacy, including children’s online privacy. She said that McDonald’s had blocked public access to several directories on the site.
Last year, the F.T.C. filed a complaint against W3 Innovations, a developer of popular iPhone and iPod Touch apps like Emily’s Dress Up, which invited children to design outfits and e-mail their comments to a blog. The agency said that the apps violated the children’s privacy rule by collecting the e-mail addresses of tens of thousands of children without their parents’ permission and encouraging those children to post personal information publicly. The company later settled the case, agreeing to pay a penalty of $50,000 and delete personal data it had collected about children.
It is often difficult to know what kind of data is being collected and shared. Industry trade groups say marketers do not knowingly track young children for advertising purposes. But a study last year of 54 Web sites popular with children, including Disney.go.com and Nick.com, found that many used tracking technologies extensively.
“I was surprised to find that pretty much all of the same technologies used to track adults are being used on kids’ Web sites,” said Richard M. Smith, an Internet security expert in Boston who conducted the study at the request of the Center for Digital Democracy, an advocacy group.
Using a software program called Ghostery, which detects and identifies tracking entities on Web sites, a New York Times reporter recently identified seven trackers on Nick.com — including Quantcast, an analytics company that, according to its own marketing material, helps Web sites “segment out specific audiences you want to sell” to advertisers.
Ghostery found 13 trackers on a Disney game page for kids, including AudienceScience, an analytics company that, according to that company’s site, “pioneered the concept of targeting and audience-based marketing.”
David Bittler, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, which runs Nick.com, says Viacom, the parent company, does not show targeted ads on Nick.com or other company sites for children under 13. But the sites and their analytics partners may collect data anonymously about users for purposes like improving content. Zenia Mucha, a spokeswoman for Disney, said the company does not show targeted ads to children and requires its ad partners to do the same.
Another popular children’s site, Webkinz, says openly that its advertising partners may aim at visitors with ads based on the collection of “anonymous data.” In its privacy policy, Webkinz describes the practice as “online advanced targeting.”
If the F.T.C. carries out its proposed changes, children’s Web sites would be required to obtain parents’ permission before tracking children around the Web for advertising purposes, even with anonymous customer codes.
Some parents say they are trying to teach their children basic online self-defense. “We don’t give out birth dates to get the free stuff,” said Patricia Tay-Weiss, a mother of two young children in Venice, Calif., who runs foreign language classes for elementary school students. “We are teaching our kids to ask, ‘What is the company getting from you and what are they going to do with that information?’ ”
-
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=105&load=7537
-
Yeah, yeah, I know, a fund raiser email-- but the question is presented: If we don't like being on Government camera 24/7 and think it quite unAmerican, what are we to do?
Dear Marc F.,
As Ben Franklin stated, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Sadly, the statists in Washington, D.C. keep choosing to take away more and more of our liberties for some bureaucrat's vision of so-called "safety."
In today's world, "security" really means handing over the last bits of freedom to Big Government's prying eyes.
Just recently, the Senate Armed Services Committee called for drones returning from Afghanistan to be used "freely and routinely" in U.S. airspace.
Government agencies are training drones by tracking civilian cars over American cities.
Law enforcement agencies are buying them up by the dozen – happy to let the spying begin.
The Congressional Research Service states domestic drones could be equipped "with facial recognition or soft biometric recognition, which can recognize and track individuals based on attributes such as height, age, gender, and skin color."
More than 30,000 are expected to be flying across the United States in the near future.
This isn't something out of George Orwell's 1984. It's America in 2012.
And it's all designed so politicians can line the pockets of their crony capitalist pals – while you and I pay the price with our tax dollars and our freedom.
Marc F., I'm not telling you all this to dishearten you – although I understand it may be discouraging to look the facts straight in the face.
I'm telling you this because these are the battles you and I can't ignore if we are going to maintain our last vestiges of freedom as Americans – and regain what we've lost.
After all, in recent years, we've witnessed the passage of the so-called "Patriot" Act, which allows the government to wiretap and spy on American citizens.
We've seen the passage of the NDAA - allowing the government to lock up and detain American citizens indefinitely without so much as a warrant.
And we see the TSA routinely groping elderly women and children at airports.
Ten years after its creation, a congressional report was issued saying the TSA was "bloated and ineffective."
More than 25,000 security breaches have occurred under its watch.
Our liberties are being stolen from us daily – and for NOTHING.
So what's next? What else will the security statists demand of us in order to finally make us "safe and secure"?
"Black boxes" in every car?
Cameras on every street corner? In every house?
RFID tracking chips implanted in every man, woman, and child – all designed to ensure we're "safe"?
So government bureaucrats can ensure we don't smoke the wrong thing?
To ensure our sodas aren't too big or our cheeseburgers too greasy?
How much liberty will politicians steal before the American people wake up and say "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!"?
I believe you and I are at a tipping point.
More and more Americans ARE getting fed up.
Senator Rand Paul has already introduced legislation to get the out-of-control TSA screeners out of our airports.
And he recently introduced a bill that would stop the government from arbitrarily using drones to spy on Americans by forcing it to obey the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
But more attacks on our Fourth Amendment rights are coming at the American people full-speed ahead.
It's up to you and me to stop them.
You and I must be prepared to take on the statists and defend our freedoms.
That's exactly what Campaign for Liberty has been doing - and will continue to do - in the coming weeks and months.
Our goal is to reawaken men and women from coast to coast and rally them to defend liberty before it's too late.
Because it's not too late.
Not yet.
The free soul of America still exists.
But it's up to you and me to create a grassroots fire that no politician in his or her right mind would dare ignore.
In Liberty,
John Tate
President
P.S. The Big Government statists are wasting no time further eroding our Fourth Amendment rights.
And with government ramping up its use of drones to spy on the American people on our own soil, it's never been more important that you and I stand up for those rights.
Campaign for Liberty has been fighting this ongoing battle for years now, and we will stay on the frontlines of the fight to STOP the invasion of our privacy by an out-of-control government.
If you can chip in with a generous contribution of $25 or even just $10 to help C4L continue the fight to defend our privacy rights, I'd greatly appreciate it.
-
Are manned police aircraft scary?
-
Given practical realities, there will be a limit as to the number, and we will know when they are there.
With the new technology we appear headed to a New World where unseen cameras will be everywhere recording everything and storing it for always. This is a HUGE paradigm shift.
-
Unmanned aircraft require a pilot still. As far as cameras everywhere that ship sailed long ago.
-
When the Most Personal Secrets Get Outed on Facebook .
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
Taylor McCormick was outed after he was added to a Facebook group that automatically informed friends he had joined a choir, Queer Chorus, at the University of Texas, Austin.
AUSTIN, Texas—Bobbi Duncan desperately wanted her father not to know she is lesbian. Facebook told him anyway.
One evening last fall, the president of the Queer Chorus, a choir group she had recently joined, inadvertently exposed Ms. Duncan's sexuality to her nearly 200 Facebook friends, including her father, by adding her to a Facebook Inc. discussion group. That night, Ms. Duncan's father left vitriolic messages on her phone, demanding she renounce same-sex relationships, she says, and threatening to sever family ties.
The 22-year-old cried all night on a friend's couch. "I felt like someone had hit me in the stomach with a bat," she says.
Soon, she learned that another choir member, Taylor McCormick, had been outed the very same way, upsetting his world as well.
The president of the chorus, a student organization at the University of Texas campus here, had added Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick to the choir's Facebook group. The president didn't know the software would automatically tell their Facebook friends that they were now members of the chorus.
The two students were casualties of a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval. As a result, the two lost control over their secrets, even though both were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents.
"Our hearts go out to these young people," says Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes. "Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls."
In the era of social networks like Facebook and Google Inc.'s Google+, companies that catalog people's activities for a profit routinely share, store and broadcast everyday details of people's lives. This creates a challenge for individuals navigating the personal-data economy: how to keep anything private in an era when it is difficult to predict where your information will end up.
Enlarge Image
Close
Lance Rosenfield/Prime for The Wall Street Journal
Bobbi Duncan sings with the Queer Chorus at the University of Texas and was also inadvertently outed after joining the chorus's Facebook group.
.
Many people have been stung by accidentally revealing secrets online that were easier kept in the past. In Quebec, Canada, in 2009, Nathalie Blanchard lost her disability-insurance benefits for depression after she posted photos on Facebook showing her having fun at the beach and at a nightclub with male exotic dancers. After seeing the photos, her insurer, Manulife Financial, hired a private investigator and asked a doctor to re-evaluate her diagnosis, according to Ms. Blanchard's lawyer.
Ms. Blanchard didn't realize her photos were visible to the public, according to the lawyer, who added that depressed people often try to disguise their illness to family and friends. Ms. Blanchard sued to have her benefits reinstated. The matter was settled out of court.
A Manulife spokeswoman declined to discuss the case, saying "we would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook."
Losing control online is more than a technology problem—it's a sociological turning point. For much of human history, personal information spread slowly, person-to-person if at all.
Boost Your Privacy
Check your Facebook privacy controls with this guide.
.
.
The Facebook era, however, makes it possible to disclose private matters to wide populations, intentionally or not. Personal worlds that previously could be partitioned—work, family, friendships, matters of sexuality—become harder to keep apart. One solution, staying off Facebook, has become harder to do as it reaches a billion people around the world.
Facebook is committed to the principle of one identity for its users. It has shut down accounts of people who use pseudonyms and multiple accounts, including those of dissidents and protesters in China and Egypt. The company says its commitment to "real names" makes the site safer for users. It is also at the core of the service they sell to advertisers, namely, access to the real you.
Closeted gays and lesbians face particular challenges in controlling their images online, given that friends, family and enemies have the ability to expose them.
In Austin, Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick, 21, deliberately tried to stay in the closet with their parents, even as they stepped out on campus. Ms. Duncan's parents home-schooled her and raised her in Newton, N.C., where the family attended a fundamentalist church. Now a linguistics student, she told her best friend in the summer of 2011 that she might be gay.
As she struggled with her sexuality, she adjusted her Facebook privacy settings to hide any hint of it from her father, whom she had helped sign up for Facebook. "Once I had my Facebook settings set, I knew—or thought I knew—there wasn't any problem," she says.
Mr. McCormick, studying to become a pharmacist, came out in July 2011 to his mother in his hometown of Blanco, Texas, but not to his father, whom Mr. McCormick describes as a member of a conservative church that teaches homosexuality is sin.
Enlarge Image
Close
Referee Brian Stropolo wearing a Saints jacket and cap in this photo that he had posted on Facebook. 'I don't believe you will see him back on the field,' an NFL spokesman says.
.
He set Facebook controls for what he calls a "privacy lockdown" on posts that his father, in San Antonio, could see. "We have the one big secret when we're young," he says. "I knew not everyone was going to be accepting."
UT Austin was more accepting. As many university campuses have for years, it offered a safe space for young people to come out without parents knowing. Last fall, Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick attended the first rehearsal for the Queer Chorus, a group for gay, lesbian and transgender students and their allies.
"This is a great place to find yourself as a queer person," says the chorus's then-president, Christopher Acosta. The group is known for renditions of pop songs in which it sometimes changes the gender of pronouns. Ms. Duncan agreed to play piano and sing alto. Mr. McCormick, who has a slight frame, surprised the chorus with his deep bass.
At the rehearsal, on Sept. 8, Mr. Acosta asked if any members weren't on the chorus's Facebook group, where rehearsals would be planned. Mr. McCormick and Ms. Duncan said they weren't.
When Joining a 'Group' Reveals Too Much
How Facebook Shares Users' Memberships With Their Friends Online
Someone creates a 'group' on Facebook around a shared interest or activity.
If the group's creator sets it to be 'open,' other Facebook users can see its activities.
The creator has the ability to add his or her Facebook friends to the group.
Getting added generates a notice that can appear on their friends' Facebook pages—alerting others to their membership.
People added to a group this way have the option to leave, but are first added by default.
.
That night, Mr. Acosta turned on his MacBook Pro and added the two new members to the chorus Facebook group. Facebook, then and now, offers three options for this sort of group: "secret" (membership and discussions hidden to nonmembers), "closed" (anybody can see the group and its members, but only members see posts), and "open" (membership and content both public).
Mr. Acosta had chosen open. "I was so gung-ho about the chorus being unashamedly loud and proud," he says.
But there was a trade-off he says he didn't know about. When he added Ms. Duncan, which didn't require her prior online consent, Facebook posted a note to her all friends, including her father, telling them that she had joined the Queer Chorus.
When Mr. Acosta pushed the button, Facebook allowed him to override the intent of the individual privacy settings Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick had used to hide posts from their fathers. Facebook's online help center explains that open groups, as well as closed groups, are visible to the public and will publish notification to users' friends. But Facebook doesn't allow users to approve before a friend adds them to a group, or to hide their addition from friends.
After being contacted by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook adjusted the language in its online Help Center to explain situations, like the one that arose with Queer Chorus, in which friends can see that people have joined groups.
Facebook also added a link to this new explanation directly from the screen where users create groups.
"I was figuring out the rules by trial and error," says Mr. Acosta.
A few hours later, Ms. Duncan's father began leaving her angry voice mails, according to Ms. Duncan and a friend who was present.
“I remember I was miserable and said, Facebook decided to tell my dad that I was gay.”
Bobbi Duncan
"No no no no no no no," Ms. Duncan recalls telling a friend. "I have him hidden from my updates, but he saw this," she said. "He saw it."
Ms. Duncan's father didn't respond to requests for comment for this article.
Her father called repeatedly that night, she says, and when they spoke, he threatened to stop paying her car insurance. He told her to go on Facebook and renounce the chorus and gay lifestyles.
On his Facebook page, he wrote two days later: "To all you queers. Go back to your holes and wait for GOD," according to text provided by Ms. Duncan. "Hell awaits you pervert. Good luck singing there."
Ms. Duncan says she fell into depression for weeks. "I couldn't function," she says. "I would be in class and not hear a word anyone was saying."
Mr. McCormick's mother phoned him the night his name joined the Queer Chorus group. "She said, 'S—has hit the fan…Your dad has found out.' I asked how," Mr. McCormick recalled, "and she said it was all over Facebook."
His father didn't talk to his son for three weeks, the younger Mr. McCormick says. "He just dropped off the face of my earth."
Mr. McCormick's father declined to participate in this article.
Privacy critics including the American Civil Liberties Union say Facebook has slowly shifted the defaults on its software to reveal more information about people to the public and to Facebook's corporate partners.
"Users are often unaware of the extent to which their information is available," says Chris Conley, technology and civil-liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. "And if sensitive info is released, it is often impossible to put the cat back in the bag."
Facebook executives say that they have added increasingly more privacy controls, because that encourages people to share. "It is all about making it easier to share with exactly who you want and never be surprised about who sees something," said Chris Cox, Facebook's vice president of product, in an interview in August 2011 as the site unveiled new privacy controls. Facebook declined to make Mr. Cox available for this article.
Still, privacy advocates say control loopholes remain where friends can disclose information about other users. Facebook users, for example, can't take down photos of them posted by others.
Enlarge Image
Close
Lance Rosenfield/Prime for The Wall Street Journal
Mr. McCormick, center, and Ms. Duncan at the piano
.A greater concern, they say, is that many people don't know how to use Facebook's privacy controls. A survey conducted in the spring of 2011 for the Pew Research Center found that U.S. social-network users were becoming more active in controlling their online identities by taking steps like deleting comments posted by others. Still, about half reported some difficulty in managing privacy controls.
This past September, the National Football League pulled referee Brian Stropolo from a game between the New Orleans Saints and the Carolina Panthers after ESPN found a photo of Mr. Stropolo wearing a Saints jacket and cap that he had posted on Facebook.
It remains unclear whether the photo was intended to be public or private.
An NFL spokesman said, "I don't believe you will see him back on the field." The NFL declined to make Mr. Stropolo available.
Privacy researchers say that increasing privacy settings may actually produce what they call an "illusion of control" for social-network users. In a series of experiments in 2010, Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor Alessandro Acquisti found that offering people more privacy settings generated "some form of overconfidence that, paradoxically, makes people overshare more," he says.
Allison Palmer, vice president of campaigns and programs at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says her organization is helping Facebook to develop resources for gay users to help them understand how best to maintain safety and privacy on the site.
"Facebook is one of the few tech companies to make this a priority," she says.
Mr. Acosta, the choir president, says he should have been sensitive to the risk of online outings. His parents learned he was gay when, in high school, he sent an email saying so that accidentally landed in his father's in-box.
Today, he says, his parents accept his sexuality. So before creating his Facebook group, he didn't think about the likelihood of less-accepting parents on Facebook.
"I didn't put myself in that mind-set," he says. "I do take some responsibility."
Some young gay people do, in fact, choose Facebook as a forum for their official comings-out, when they change their Facebook settings to publicly say, "Interested In: Men" or "Interested In: Women." For many young Americans, sexuality can be confidential but no longer a shameful subject. Sites like Facebook give them an opportunity to claim their sexuality and find community.
For gays, social media "offers both resources and risks," says C.J. Pascoe, a Colorado College sociology professor who studies the role of new media in teen sexuality. "In a physical space, you can be in charge of the audiences around you. But in an online space, you have to be prepared for the reality that, at any given moment, they could converge without your control."
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has long posited that the capability to share information will change how we groom our identities. "The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly," he said in an interview for David Kirkpatrick's 2010 book, "The Facebook Effect." Facebook users have "one identity," he said.
Facebook declined to make Mr. Zuckerberg available.
Days after their outings, Ms. Duncan and Mr. McCormick met at the campus gender-and-sexuality center, which provides counseling. On a couch, they swapped tales. "I remember I was miserable and said, 'Facebook decided to tell my dad that I was gay,' " she says. "He looked at me and said, 'Oh really, you too?'"
Mr. McCormick's mother, Monica McCormick, meanwhile, was worried how the Facebook disclosure might affect her business selling insurance. "Every kid in this town now knows," she says. "I am sure that I have lost clients, but they are not going to tell you why. That is living in a small town."
Mr. McCormick and his father eventually talked about his sexuality over an awkward lunch at a burger joint and haven't discussed it much since. But Mr. McCormick feels more open and proud about his sexuality. He changed his Facebook profile to "Interested In: Men."
After Ms. Duncan's Sept. 8 outing, she went through long periods of not speaking with her father.
For a while, Ms. Duncan's mother moved into her daughter's apartment with her. "I wanted to be with her," says her mother, who is also named Bobbi. "This was something that I thought her father had crossed the line over, and I could not agree with him."
Speaking of Mr. Duncan, she says: "The big deal for him was that it was posted and that all his friends and all his family saw it."
The younger Ms. Duncan says she tried to build bridges with her father around the year-end holidays. But the arguments persisted.
"I finally realized I don't need this problem in my life anymore," she says. "I don't think he is evil, he is just incredibly misguided."
She stopped returning her dad's calls in May.
She and Mr. McCormick remain in the chorus. Mr. Acosta changed the Facebook group to "secret" and the chorus established online-privacy guidelines.
Today, Ms. Duncan has her first girlfriend. "I am in a really good place," she says, but wouldn't want anybody to have her experience. "I blame Facebook," she says. "It shouldn't be somebody else's choice what people see of me."
-
An interesting 4th Amendment case here;
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...t-judge-rules/
-
Supreme Court wary of use of police drug dogs outside homes
Most justices, hearing arguments on police use of dogs to sniff for illegal drugs at the front door of a home, suggest that it violates the 4th Amendment ban on unreasonable searches.
Franky, the police dog involved in the 4th Amendment case before the U.S. Supreme Court. (Alan Diaz, Associated Press / December 6, 2011)
By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
November 1, 2012
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices spent part of their Halloween day debating whether visitors, including policemen with dogs, have a right to stand on the front porch of a house and knock on the door, or whether such unwanted visits may violate the rights of the homeowner.
The question arose in a case involving whether police may use a dog to sniff for illegal drugs at the front door of a home.
A lawyer defending a Florida police officer said that since trick-or-treaters can visit a front porch, so can a police officer with his trained dog.
"It's well-established, we think, going back to the common law, that there is an implied consent for people — visitors, salesmen, Girl Scouts, trick-or-treaters — to come to your house and knock on the door," said Washington attorney Gregory Garre.
But Garre ran into sharp opposition from most of the jurists, including Justice Antonin Scalia.
It is "not implied consent for the policeman to come up with the dog," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Scalia agreed. "When the officer's going there to conduct a search, it's not permitted," he said.
Garre was defending a Miami police officer who took his drug dog, Franky, to the front of a house searching for evidence of marijuana. When Franky gave his signal near the front door, the officer obtained a search warrant and found marijuana growing inside.
The Supreme Court took up the case to decide whether such an action violates the 4th Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches.
"In my neighborhood, neighbors can bring their dog up on the leash when they knock on your front door, and I think that's true in most neighborhoods in America," Garre said. "Homeowners that don't like dogs and want them off their property [can] put a fence around it to say, 'No dogs allowed.'"
"So now we tell all the drug dealers: Put up a sign that says 'No dogs'?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer said a homeowner "would resent someone coming up with a large animal sitting on a front step … and sniffing for five to 15 minutes."
Ginsburg said that if the court were to approve this law enforcement tactic, police could "just go down the street, have the dog sniff in front of every door, or go into an apartment building."
Scalia, one of the court's conservative leaders, has drawn a line against searches that invade private space. In January, he wrote an opinion limiting law enforcement's use of GPS devices to track a car's movements. Putting the device on the vehicle was a "physical intrusion" into the owner's private property, he said.
A decade earlier, Scalia wrote a 5-4 opinion forbidding police from using a heat scanner to detect heat spots that might reveal indoor growing of marijuana.
On Wednesday, Scalia and the four liberal justices sounded as though they would limit police use of dogs around homes or apartments to sniff for illegal drugs.
But the justices suggested they were not inclined to require more proof that drug-sniffing dogs are usually right when they "alert" and trigger a search of a car or truck. Many police departments use trained dogs to sniff around cars that have been stopped along the road, and an alert from a dog gives an officer probable cause to search inside. Last year, the Florida Supreme Court said it had doubts about the reliability of some police dogs, and it said officers must present data showing how well dogs do in detecting drugs. That would "in effect put the dogs on trial," Garre said, urging the court to say police must show only that their dogs were well-trained.
-
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57542510-38/court-oks-warrantless-use-of-hidden-surveillance-cameras/
Court OKs warrantless use of hidden surveillance cameras
In latest case to test how technological developments alter Americans' privacy, federal court sides with Justice Department on police use of concealed surveillance cameras on private property.
by Declan McCullagh
| October 30, 2012 10:45 AM PDT
Police are allowed in some circumstances to install hidden surveillance cameras on private property without obtaining a search warrant, a federal judge said yesterday.
CNET has learned that U.S. District Judge William Griesbach ruled that it was reasonable for Drug Enforcement Administration agents to enter rural property without permission -- and without a warrant -- to install multiple "covert digital surveillance cameras" in hopes of uncovering evidence that 30 to 40 marijuana plants were being grown.
This is the latest case to highlight how advances in technology are causing the legal system to rethink how Americans' privacy rights are protected by law. In January, the Supreme Court rejected warrantless GPS tracking after previously rejecting warrantless thermal imaging, but it has not yet ruled on warrantless cell phone tracking or warrantless use of surveillance cameras placed on private property without permission.
Yesterday Griesbach adopted a recommendation by U.S. Magistrate Judge William Callahan dated October 9. That recommendation said that the DEA's warrantless surveillance did not violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and requires that warrants describe the place that's being searched.
"The Supreme Court has upheld the use of technology as a substitute for ordinary police surveillance," Callahan wrote.
Two defendants in the case, Manuel Mendoza and Marco Magana of Green Bay, Wis., have been charged with federal drug crimes after DEA agent Steven Curran claimed to have discovered more than 1,000 marijuana plants grown on the property, and face possible life imprisonment and fines of up to $10 million. Mendoza and Magana asked Callahan to throw out the video evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds, noting that "No Trespassing" signs were posted throughout the heavily wooded, 22-acre property owned by Magana and that it also had a locked gate.
U.S. Attorney James Santelle, who argued that warrantless surveillance cameras on private property "does not violate the Fourth Amendment."
(Credit: U.S. Department of Justice)
Callahan based his reasoning on a 1984 Supreme Court case called Oliver v. United States, in which a majority of the justices said that "open fields" could be searched without warrants because they're not covered by the Fourth Amendment. What lawyers call "curtilage," on the other hand, meaning the land immediately surrounding a residence, still has greater privacy protections.
"Placing a video camera in a location that allows law enforcement to record activities outside of a home and beyond protected curtilage does not violate the Fourth Amendment," Justice Department prosecutors James Santelle and William Lipscomb told Callahan.
As digital sensors become cheaper and wireless connections become more powerful, the Justice Department's argument would allow police to install cameras on private property without court oversight -- subject only to budgetary limits and political pressure.
About four days after the DEA's warrantless installation of surveillance cameras, a magistrate judge did subsequently grant a warrant. But attorneys for Mendoza and Magana noticed that the surveillance took place before the warrant was granted.
"That one's actions could be recorded on their own property, even if the property is not within the curtilage, is contrary to society's concept of privacy," wrote Brett Reetz, Magana's attorney, in a legal filing last month. "The owner and his guest... had reason to believe that their activities on the property were not subject to video surveillance as it would constitute a violation of privacy."
A jury trial has been scheduled for January 22
-
http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/what-petraeus-affair-reveals-about-your-emails/
What Petraeus affair reveals about your emails
by Steve ElwartEmail | Archive
Steve Elwart, P.E., Ph.D., is the executive research analyst with the Koinonia Institute and a subject matter expert for the Department of Homeland Security. He can be contacted at steve.elwart@studycenter.com.More ↓
Catch him Cheating On You1). Enter His Email Address 2). See Hidden Pics & Social Profiles Now! Spokeo.com/Find-Cheaters
“Hell has no wrath like a woman scorned.” The saying took on a new meaning, with wrath being source of the “Petraeus-gate” that started when a general’s mistress believed he was cheating her.
The fact that Jill Kelley, a friend of the Petraeus family, received what she felt were threatening emails was apparently enough to bring the FBI into the case, prodded along by an agent-friend of the recipient.
The FBI started the investigation under the authority of the 1986 United States Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The act allows for “government entities” to acquire a warrant to access email records less than 180 days old “if there is reasonable cause to believe a crime has been committed.” For email older than six months, a federal agency only needs to get a subpoena signed by a federal prosecutor, not a judge, to obtain the messages.
Because of the wording of the law, Americans have fewer privacy protections for their electronic emails than would for those same messages than if they were printed out and stuck in a drawer.
In the eyes of the law, email kept on an individual’s hard drive in their home computer has the same protection as one’s personal papers, which require a search warrant. Emails stored on a remote server “in the cloud” do not have the same protection.
The writers of the law also did not envision the cloud. Email stored in the cloud has the same legal protection as documents in a public warehouse: the government can obtain them with a simple subpoena; no court procedure is required.
To make things really confusing, the government’s interpretation of the ECPA was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court that covers the western United States, including California, and the home to many online email companies and the servers that host their messages. As a result, the DOJ advises “Agents outside of the Ninth Circuit can therefore obtain such email (and other stored electronic or wire communications in ‘electronic storage’ more than 180 days) using a subpoena…” but reminds agents in the Ninth Circuit to get a warrant.
Cloud email servers use the power of many different servers across the Internet. It does not reside in one place. Mail services such as those offered by Google (gmail) will store email messages (from your inbox, draft, and deleted folders) long after you have forgotten them. FBI and other investigating agencies routinely gain access to electronic inboxes and information about email accounts offered by Google, and other Internet mail providers.
The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal report that Jill Kelley contacted the FBI about “five to ten” anonymous emails that started in May and reportedly warned Kelley to “stay away” from an unnamed man. In the resulting investigation, the FBI discovered electronic paper trail eventually led to an “anonymous” account that was used by Paula Broadwell and her husband.
Is it just a matter of time before America collapses? Discover the details in “The Fall of America and the Western World.”
In examining this and other accounts, agents uncovered sexually explicit emails that Broadwell exchanged with another party who also used what has been reported to be a Gmail account. Eventually, investigators were able to determine that the other party was CIA Director David Petraeus using an assumed name.
While it hasn’t been specified exactly how the FBI were able to track the emails back to Broadwell, anyone with knowledge of how email works can make an intelligent assessment.
Petraeus and Broadwell used anonymous accounts with fake names that they set up for the purpose of their illicit affair. While they knew enough to cover some of their tracks, they weren’t sophisticated enough to take sufficient steps to completely protect their identity.
There are some services, such as Tor Project that can hinder tracing attempts. Other services such as Hotspot Shield and LogMeIn Hamachi can create a virtual private network to help preserve privacy. But this system is not fool-proof. Many of these services still use U.S. based servers that may have logs that can be read by investigating agencies or hackers.
Any email messages that are sent leave a trail. Many email services contain hidden codes called “metadata” that will contain the IP address of the sender’s computer’s internet connection device called a “router.” Other services, such as Gmail, will only include the IP address and Internet name of the servers that pass along the email.
The FBI spent weeks tracing the route these messages took. The FBI cross-referenced the IP addresses of the email’s origins against hotel guest lists, looking for common names. The messages were traced back not only to the Broadwell home, but also to the hotels where she was staying while sending some of the messages. (The travel patterns revealed by the emails coincided with her travel to promote her biography of Petraeus.)
The FBI could also request email data from the email service without the knowledge of the user. In fact, the email service is prohibited by law in notifying the user that the records were accessed.
Google is routinely approached by investigating agencies for email information. In fact, they issue what they call a “Transparency Report” every six months, to provide users with statistics about government requests for data and takedowns. For the period of January to June 2012, Google fulfilled 35,000 government requests for email information, 16,000 from the United States alone. How many of these requests were accompanied by a warrant is never disclosed.
Armed with the metadata and information from the email service, the FBI now had Broadwell’s name and in the course of the investigation uncovered another disturbing element, the possibility that classified information was being sent to Broadwell, who is also a reporter.
Federal prosecutors now had the probable cause they needed to request a warrant to monitor Broadwell’s other email accounts. Through this warrant they were able to determine that Broadwell and another person had set up a private email account to exchange messages.
A little more digging uncovered that fact that anonymous person Broadwell was communicating with was Petraeus.
(In a bizarre twist, another Army general, John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was also caught up in the investigation, being suspected of exchanging 20,000 to 30,000 pages of potentially inappropriate communications with Jill Kelley, the woman who sparked the investigation in the first place.)
The investigators also discovered that Broadwell and Petraeus had used a technique that is common among terrorist organizations and organized crime. They used the oft-neglected draft folder.
In this technique, one person will write a message and rather than send the message, they will save it to their draft folder. The other person will then log into the account, usually through a web browser and read the message in the folder.
Ironically, storing emails in a draft folder, rather than an inbox, may make it easier for the government to intercept their communications. This is because the Department of Justice has argued that emails in the “draft” or “sent mail” folder are not in “electronic storage” (as defined by the Stored Communications Act), and thus not deserving of warrant protection. Instead, the government has argued it should be able to get such messages with just subpoena rather than a warrant.
Some of the techniques the FBI user to track down Broadwell, Gen. Petraeus and later, Gen. Allen can also be utilized by any computer user.
For example, for a Gmail account, a person can see this metadata by doing the following:
1.Log into the Gmail account and open a message.
2.In the upper right corner of the message, next to the “reply” button, click on the “down” button.
3.Then click on the “Show original” selection.
4.A new window will open showing all the data that was hidden in the message.
A guide is available to download that will give instructions for looking at metadata for 19 different type of email accounts.
With this metadata, the IP address of the sender can be determined and then use an IP address locator such as WhatIsMyIPAddress to find out the ISP where the email account is registered as well as its geographic location. This is good information to have if a computer user is getting attacked by multiple spam messages coming from one sender.
It is also interesting to look up your own email address to see what information is available on you.
So far, the results of the investigation are varied: the distinguished military careers of two long-serving servicemen are effectively ended, three marriages damaged, perhaps irreparably, and the insecurity of our electronic communication has been exposed.
Congress is supposed to be looking into the antiquated communications law, but don’t hold your breath. The Justice Department has warned that updating that telephone-modem-era law would have an “adverse impact” on investigations. The White House, for its part, does not seem to be in a hurry to secure an individual’s rights against having their privacy violated.
Interestingly, in congressional testimony, James A. Baker, associate deputy attorney general for the Department of Justice, has suggested that people’s online privacy is enhanced if the government has easier access to private data. “By authorizing law enforcement officers to obtain evidence from communications providers, ECPA enables the government to investigate and prosecute hackers, identity thieves, and other online criminals. Pursuant to ECPA, the government obtains evidence critical to prosecuting these privacy-related crimes.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said, “With the explosion of cloud computing, social networking sites, and other new technologies, determining how best to bring this privacy law into the digital age will be one of Congress’s greatest challenges.”
That email invisibility cloak many Americans think they have is full of holes.
-
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552225-38/senate-bill-rewrite-lets-feds-read-your-e-mail-without-warrants/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/texas-student-successfully-defies-total-surveillance-state-citing-mark-of-the-beast/
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB_jp3Sm1BY
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB_jp3Sm1BY
According to a post here:
http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=97606&page=2,
"Short summary of the story...
*Land owner (Ray Kirkus) was building an illegal septic or sewer system in his backyard that was allegedly polluting neighborhood wells.
*Local health department official (Julie Wolfe) had been by the day before to try to document the concern, but Ray chased her off.
*Julie returns the next day with the a local Sheriff (Deputy Cooper) to assist.
*Ray did indeed sue the Health Department et al., however his case was thrown out and he was ordered to vacate his property as a health hazard.
*Ray sells this property on eBay, and moves to Michigan."
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-still-the-land-of-the-free/2012/01/04/gIQAvcD1wP_story.html
-
BD: Thanks for the background info on the Kirkus case.
-
BD:
Although we don't know what happened on Day One, I have considerable sympathy for a citizen with the clear and simple idea that the State can't come on his property without a warrant. It strikes me a profoundly arrogant for this bureaucrat to simply walk on his land without stating her statutory authority for doing so.
-
Guro, as you know we often agree on issues related to civil liberties. As noted, I found the short description on a particular site. I am unsure of the legitimacy of the information.
Did you read the Washington Post article posted 11/28 here?
-
I'm confused. The only post on this thread on 11/28 was mine of the youtube clip.
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-still-the-land-of-the-free/2012/01/04/gIQAvcD1wP_story.html
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-still-the-land-of-the-free/2012/01/04/gIQAvcD1wP_story.html
A very interesting piece. Surprising to me that a list of lost freedoms only includes those lost as a result of us being under attack by Islamic terrorism, with no alternative offered as to how to protect ourselves without these losses of freedoms.
"If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will."
Law enforcement as we knew it, innocent until proven guilty with prosecution after the crime occurs, does not work against suicide bombers and planned acts of war. Did founders like George Washington have his troops hold fire in war until after each target had the right to a speedy trial and to confront his accusers?
If my cell number is found in a killed Afghan terrorist's speed dial, I expect some surveillance on me until my innocence becomes clear. That is actually a gain not a loss of freedom IMHO.
"President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)"
Does the power to kill a terrorist, a planner of war and attacks against the United States, operating in Yemen make us akin to Syria, Iran or Nigeria? Good grief.
Sudarsan, Raghavan; Michael D. Shear (December 25, 2009). "U.S.-aided attack in Yemen thought to have killed Aulaqi, 2 al-Qaeda leaders". The Washington Post.
Usborne, David; The Centre for Social Cohesion, a British think-tank (April 8, 2010). "Obama orders US-born cleric to be shot on sight". London: The Independent.
Newton, Paula (March 10, 2010). "Purported al-Awlaki message calls for jihad against US". CNN. Archived from the original on April 19, 2010.
Scott Shane and Robert Worth, "Challenge Heard on Move to Kill Qaeda-Linked Cleric", The New York Times, November 8, 2010.
Meanwhile we have lost the right to work, to keep fruits of our labor, to save, to invest, to hire, to choose our healthcare, to grow wheat or open a lemon stand on our property, but no mention within this author's '10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free'. Topics for another thread perhaps.
-
NSA Whistleblower Explains Chilling Interview: ‘Everyone in the U.S. Is Under Virtual Surveillance’
Posted on December 5, 2012 at 8:45am by Erica Ritz
William Binney, a whistleblower at the National Security Agency (NSA), had his life turned upside down after revealing to the public just how much information the United States government is gathering on its citizens. He says the most recent wave began after September 11, 2001, but that it has only accelerated in recent years.
A 32-year veteran of the agency, Binney had the title of senior technical director and was considered one of the foremost mathematicians and code breakers in the business, according to a documentary featured in the New York Times. He quit, however, after the NSA started using programs it had developed to spy on foreign governments, to spy on Americans.
He has not been silent since his resignation, and is warning Americans from every platform he can find. He recently gave a chilling interview to Russia Today, and then spoke with TheBlaze TV.
With Russia Today, Binney reiterated how the government is collecting information on everyone, not just national security risks and suspected national security risks. Then, if you become a target “for whatever reason,” he explained, ” the government can go in– or the FBI, or other agencies of the government– they can go into their database, pull all that data collected.”
And with hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations these days, you are doing something wrong.
Here is a partial transcript from the interview:
RT: You blew the whistle on the agency when George W. Bush was the president. With President Obama in office, in your opinion, has anything changed at the agency, in the surveillance program? In what direction is this administration moving?
WB: The change is it’s getting worse. They are doing more. He is supporting the building of the Bluffdale facility [in Utah], which is over two billion dollars they are spending on storage room for data. That means that they are collecting a lot more now and need more storage for it…
[...]
RT: It seems that the public is divided between those who think that the government surveillance program violates their civil liberties, and those who say, ‘I’ve nothing to hide. So, why should I care?’ What do you say to those who think that it shouldn’t concern them?
WB: The problem is if they think they are not doing anything that’s wrong, they don’t get to define that. The central government does, the central government defines what is right and wrong and whether or not they target you. So, it’s not up to the individuals. Even if they think they aren’t doing something wrong, if their position on something is against what the administration has, then they could easily become a target.
RT: Tell me about the most outrageous thing that you came across during your work at the NSA.
WB: The violations of the Constitution and any number of laws that existed at the time. That was the part that I could not be associated with. That’s why I left. They were building social networks on who is communicating and with whom inside this country. So that the entire social network of everybody, of every US citizen was being compiled over time. So, they are taking from one company alone roughly 320 million records a day. That’s probably accumulated probably close to 20 trillion over the years. [Emphasis TheBlaze]
Here is the video, via Russia Today, for more:
When Binney appeared on TheBlaze TV on Tuesday, co-host Pat Gray asked whether he had any fear for his safety, being one of the few people who has had access to the top levels of the NSA to go public with the information. There are only a few others, but Binney says he believes he is just doing his duty as an American.
“I feel I’m doing the job that a citizen is supposed to do, standing up for the Constitution and the rights of the people,” he said humbly.
Binney proceeded to explain the transformation he witnessed within the NSA– how the program would go from graphing the social networks of potential terrorists, to compiling such graphs on everyone.
At first, he tried to change the organization from the inside:
“I was working with several others [within] the NSA who were with me in this, trying to get the government to address the unconstitutional and illegal activity that they were doing… but we were basically totally unsuccessful in getting them to even recognize that they should change their ways and start doing things legally, out in the open, in a constitutionally acceptable way.”
Binney then discussed the recent resignation of Gen. David Petraeus over an extra-marital affair, and how his private communications were intercepted.
“As far as the actual government goes, [adultery] is not a high crime and misdemeanor here,” co-host Stu Burguiere weighed in. “It’s sort of secondary, and they’ll go to that extent to out somebody who may have had a political issue. That’s frightening.”
Combine that with the government’s friendly relationship with Google (and Google’s work to be able to predict your future actions), the history of big government, and this government’s willingness to declare its political opponents enemies and terrorists, and it would be foolish not to be concerned about the course we’re on.
Watch the entire interview from TheBlaze TV. http://www.video.theblaze.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=25516775&source=THEBLAZE
-
You realize that Russia Today is a propaganda arm of the KGB/FSB, right?
-
Yeah, and you realize I don't trust certain elements of our government, right? :evil: :lol:
Here's some more:
============
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/04/08/200431/-All-About-NSA-s-and-AT-T-s-Big-Brother-Machine-the-Narus-6400
All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400
by bewertFollow .
Email
38 Comments / 38 New
.
Earlier today we found out that the EFF had sued AT&T over their secret work with the NSA on surveillance of millions of US citizens without wiretaps. We learned that paragraph 65 of this complaint shows EFF is trying to turn it into a nationwide Class Action suit covering all current and former customers (any after 9/2001) of AT&T. And we learned that a retired AT&T technician had stepped forward and disclosed the installation of secret NSA spy equipment in the San Francisco trunk facility. As well as the belief that similar equipment is in place in Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.
Specifically, this equipment was the Narus ST-6400, a machine that was capable of monitoring over 622 Mbits/second in real time in May, 2000, and capturing anything that hits its' semantic (i.e. the meaning of the content) triggers. The latest generation is called NarusInsight, capable of monitoring 10 billion bits of data per second.
Follow me over the jump and let's learn some more about the private company Narus, it's founder Ovi Cohen, and board member Bill Crowell. Shall we?
.
Narus is a private company founded in 1997 by Ori Cohen, who had been in charge of technology development for VDONet, an early media streaming pioneer. It has venture funding from an all-star team of investors including JP Morgan Partners, Mayfield, NeoCarta, Presidio Venture Partners, Walden International, Intel, NTT Software and Sumisho Electronics.
Of note is that while Hoover's company factsheet on Narus continues to list Mr. Cohen as Chairman, while Narus's own website listing of the Board of Directors no longer mentions Mr. Cohen.
Prior to 9/11 Narus worked on building carrier-grade tools to analyze IP network traffic for billing purposes, to prevent what they term "revenue leakage". Post-9/11 they have continued down that path while adding more semantic monitoring abilities for surveillance purposes. They even brought in former Deputy Director of the NSA William P. Crowell as an addition to their Board of Directors. From the Press Release announcing this:
Crowell is an independent security consultant and holds several board positions with a variety of technology and technology-based security companies. Since 9/11, Crowell has served on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Task Force on Terrorism and Deterrence, the National Research Council Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism and the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.
His past positions have included president and chief executive officer of Cylink, a leading provider of e-business security solutions, as well as a series of senior positions at the National Security Agency, including deputy director of operations and deputy director of the Agency. Crowell has served as chairman of the President's Export Council (PEC) Subcommittee on Encryption, which worked with the Administration, Congress and private industry to substantially loosen restrictions on the export of encryption products and technology.
"Narus has an impressive track record of working with tier-one carriers to keep their networks running safely, continuously and profitably," said William Crowell. "I look forward to helping Narus as they forge new strategic partnerships and continue to break new ground in the telecommunications industry."
So these guys (1) build hugely cool network monitoring devices and (2) are tied into US (at least) national security organizations at the highest levels. What are these hugely cool machines capable of?
From the Key Features list of NarusInsight
-Universal data collection from links, routers, soft switches, IDS/IPS, databases, etc. provides total network view across the world's largest IP networks.
-Normalization, Correlation, Aggregation and Analysis provide a comprehensive and detailed model of user, element, protocol, application and network behaviors, in real time.
-Seven 9s reliability from data collection to data processing and analysis.
-Industry-leading packet processing performance that supports network speeds of up to OC-192 at layer 4 and OC-48 at layer 7, enabling carriers to monitor traffic at either the edge of the network or at the core.
-Unsurpassed and limitless scalability to support the world's largest, most complex IP networks.
-Unparalleled flexibility -- NarusInsight's functionality can easily be configured to meet any specific customer requirement (Narus Software Developer Kit -SDK).
-Unparalleled extensibility -- NarusInsight's functionality can easily be configured to feed a particular activity or IP service such as security, lawful intercept or even Skype detection and blocking.
How powerful is this? OC-192 carries about 10 gigabits of data per second. Ten billion bits per second, monitored in real-time. That is stunning. This is one damned powerful machine, one of the most powerful I've ever heard of in 25 years in IT.
And what does it monitor while looking at this 10 billion bits of IP data per second? First lets take a look at what the network model is, the OSI model of seven layers. NarusInsight focuses on two layers: number four, the transport layer, built on standards like TCP and UDP, the physical building blocks of internet data traffic, and number seven, the application layer, built on standards like HTTP and FTP, which are dependent on the application using them, i.e. Internet Explorer, Kazaa, Skype, etc. It monitors 10 billion bits per second at level four and 2500 million bits per second at level seven. For reference, the 256K DSL line I am using equals .25 million bits per second. So one NarusInsight machine can look at about 39,000 DSL lines at once in great detail. That is a pretty damn big number. This is some really serious hardware with equally serious software. Which is our next subject.
So what exactly is done to and with this data? That's kind of a grey area, so let's try to find what we can. The starting point is called the Internet Protocol Detail Record, which Narus helped found. From that FAQ I just linked to, we learn that
IPDR stands for the Internet Protocol Detail Record, the name comes from the traditional telecom term CDR (Call Detail Record), used to record information about usage activity within the telecom infrastructure (such as a call completion).
NDM-U stands for Network Data Management - Usage. It refers to a functional operation within the Telecom Management Forum's Telecom Operations Map. The NDM function collects data from devices and services in a service providers network. Usage refers to the type of data which is the focus of this document.
IPDR.org is the non-profit organization that promotes use of the IPDR NDM-U and other related standards. The principle deliverable for IPDR.org is the NDM-U specification and related development tools.
And is it actually being used?
IPDR.org has been in existence since 1999 and more than a dozen vendors have actual IPDR implementations "etched in code". Their systems are actually able to talk to each other and interoperate. Version 2.5 and up of the NDM-U represents a stable basis for development. IPDR.org's Interoperability Pavilion is a working demonstration of multiple companies exchanging service usage data in that format.
Service usage data. That would be data on the actual usage of the Internet. And what kind of data would this be? Way back in 1999, this article stated
In an effort to provide more complex network traffic analysis, Narus is introducing its semantic network traffic service. The company cites research which predicts the fast-growing ISP sector will become stagnant without the ability to offer differentiated services. In order to gain significant revenues from these services, a technology was necessary to allow usage based pricing.
"We realized that, at the heart of the data that is needed to accurately measure usage and enable 'pay-as-you-go' business models for Internet service providers, is what we call the 'semantics' of network traffic," said Ori Cohen, Narus' founder and chief executive officer.
"In short, by seeing the 'semantics' of network traffic, service providers can see 'inside' the data, providing much more detailed insight about the use of the Internet and the perceived value of specific applications than existing technologies allow."
Semantic Traffic Analysis uses network technology to consistently capture and analyze all IP data streams on heavily trafficked networks remotely and non-invasively. In addition, the semantics of the data stream are determined also, as well as the protocol used and the application taking place. A variety of other data is available as well.
Remember that semantics is not just the data, but rather the meaning of the data. It looks at the the data in a more comprehensive way than looking for keywords. Each NarusInsight machine does this at 2500 million bits per second, in real-time.
You really wonder why BushCo doesn't want to talk about this stuff? It's the biggest invasion of privacy in history by several orders of magnitude.
How can we know? From Narus' Lawful Intercept and Regulatory Compliance page:
Explosive Internet growth in recent years has transformed worldwide communications, yielding tremendous efficiencies and benefits, as well as many risks.
For example, terrorist attacks around the globe have been carefully orchestrated through Internet-based forms of communications such as e-mail, messaging, hidden Web pages and now VoIP, forcing governmental organizations and law enforcement agencies to re-evaluate how they are providing public security as it becomes so much easier and faster to communicate electronically.
Recent mandates and the resulting standards referenced under CALEA in the United States and ETSI in Western Europe aim to preserve the right of law enforcement agencies to conduct authorized electronic surveillance in an effort to protect the public and its right to privacy. However, these mandates create IT headaches for carriers as they struggle to meet the requirements.
With a suite of products targeted at meeting lawful intercept requirements, Narus simplifies lawful intercept tasks helping carriers and agencies meet requirements without experiencing any degradation in service quality.
Key benefits
-Packet-mode data intercepts for Service Providers and Carriers.
-Wireline to wireless and WiFi or dialup to broadband.
-"Instant Compliance" with CALEA and ETSI for simple, fast and hands-free compliance.
-Carrier-grade speeds, performance and scalability.
-Supports all of your services, out-of-the-box.
-Securely manages resources while simplifying audits and reporting.
-Network and vendor agnostic.
-Enables additional application for revenue generation or revenue protection.
This data flows right into NarusInsight Intercept Suite, which enables
Packet-level, flow-level, and application-level usage information is captured and analyzed as well as raw user session packets for forensic analysis, surveillance or in satisfying regulatory compliance for lawful intercept.
The Lawful Intercept module offers carriers and service providers compliance with regulatory requirements regarding lawful intercept. The Lawful Intercept module provides an end-to-end solution consisting of Administration, Access and Delivery functions. The Lawful Intercept module is compliant with CALEA and ETSI standards. It can be seamlessly integrated with third party products for testing/validation or as a complete law enforcement solution.
The Directed Analysis module seamlessly integrates with NarusInsight Secure Suite or other DDoS, intrusion or anomaly detection systems, securely providing analysts with real-time, surgical targeting of suspect information (from flow to application to full packets). The Directed Analyis module provides industry standard formats and offers tools for archival and integration with third party investigative tools.
These capabilities include playback of streaming media (i.e. VoIP), rendering of web pages, examination of e-mail and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols. Narus partner products offer the ability to quickly analyze information collected by the Directed Analysis or Lawful Intercept modules. When Narus partners' powerful analytic tools are combined with the surgical targeting and real-time collection capabilities of Directed Analysis and Lawful Intercept modules, analysts or law enforcement agents are provided capabilities that have been unavailable thus far.
Imagine how great a tool "instant compliance" with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act could be with this kind of reach and detail. Especially if a secret Presidential Directive allows it to be used without the warrants required under the Act.
That's what it appears we are up against, folks. Real-time semantic data monitoring on a huge scale. A scale beyond what most of us can even comprehend. It's scarey(sic).
.
Originally posted to bewert on Fri Apr 07, 2006 at 10:47 PM PDT.
-
Any tangible evidence of illegal wiretaps?
-
As noted various times in this thread at this point it is hard to tell what would be illegal under current laws, or how anyone would be able to know, particularly as long as Big Brother does not seek to use it in court.
Here's what seems to be a thoughtful analysis of the content of my previous post:
=============
The thing that rarely seems to come up in these discussions is the voluntary role of telecommunications corporations in digital surveillance. Everybody complains about "Big Brother", Bush, Obama, the Man, etc. But the government doesn't own much national digital infrastructure itself, and it has a hard time managing even the stuff it does own. It's well known at this point that the beginnings of the NSA warrantless surveillance program came when ATT allowed them to install fiber optic taps at various core switching locations around the country, and convinced most of the large telcos to turn over years' worth of call detail records from the public phone system to them.
All large telcos today have automated systems for processing surveillance requests from law enforcement agencies, and some of them are well known to produce customer data for any LE request without a warrant or subpoena. Sprint, for example, has admitted to servicing millions of LE requests per year.
The article , , , regarding Narus traffic analyzers is from 2006 and mentions real-time, full-packet analytics on 10 Gpbs links. That's par for the course for that timeframe for high-end, expensive equipment. Long-haul 10G links were common but not ubiquitous at that time. They're much more common today, with 40G and 100G links starting to come into widespread use now. Full-packet analytics at those speeds is still at the experimental stage in civilian networking, and I suspect it is in the same state in intelligence networks; the private sector is the technology leader in this area.
They can almost certainly store full-packet data for non-realtime analysis at almost any speed. It then becomes a matter of getting lots of access points (and nobody has admitted to those numbers that I've seen), deduplicating multiple copies of the data, and indexing it in a useful format. Those technologies are getting pretty advanced--Google, Facebook, etc are the world leaders here and those technologies have certainly found their way into the intel toolbox. There are also relatively simple ways of deciding in near real-time whether a chunk of data is "interesting" enough to be stored for off-line analysis. This greatly reduces the amount of uninteresting data that needs to be archived.
I would guess that the "secret sauce" lies in the algorithms they're using for flow analytics. You can store flow records (i.e., who talks to who, with vague metadata about the content) in 1-5% of the space it takes to store full content, before compression. You can also get flow records without necessarily having a tap into the traffic flow (although you still need the cooperation of the circuit owner). The NSA is the great granddaddy of intel/comms pattern analysis, and they have the advantage of being able to cross reference not only Internet data but all the other stuff that they can access (PSTN CDRs, traditional SIGINT and HUMINT, etc). I imagine they're pretty good at it. I've talked to dudes from civilian networks who have found some amazingly cool stuff from doing large-scale flow analytics.
-
Yeah, we've covered that ground before.
-
I haven't read this yet, but it was sent by a friend in response to the URLs of my most recent posts:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_william_binney_20120714/
-
Editorial
A Step Toward E-Mail Privacy
Published: December 8, 2012
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Save
E-mail
Share
Print
Reprints
The growth of the Internet, social networking and mobile technologies has transformed how Americans communicate and exchange information, but Congress has lagged in updating federal privacy laws to safeguard digital communications from inappropriate prying. Late last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee made some serious progress in the right direction.
Related News
Panel Approves a Bill to Safeguard E-Mail (November 30, 2012)
By a voice vote, and with only a single Republican asking to go on record in opposition, the committee approved a measure, proposed by its Democratic chairman, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, that would significantly enhance the privacy protection given to e-mails.
The bill, an amendment to the outdated 1986 law that now governs e-mail access, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, would require law enforcement agents to get a search warrant from a judge in order to obtain e-mail content from a communications service provider that holds private electronic messages, photos and other personal records, like Gmail or Facebook. This means having to show the court there is probable cause to believe that the sought-after records may reveal evidence of wronging.
The approach embraces a sound principle: Private electronic correspondence stored with an Internet company in the “cloud” should receive the same protection afforded letters, photos and other private material stored in a drawer or filing cabinet, or on a computer at home.
Under current law, the warrant requirement is largely limited to e-mails that are less than 180 days old. For other e-mails and digital files, investigators may obtain a court order based on a lower legal standard, showing only that the material is “relevant” to an investigation. In many cases, prosecutors can, without any judicial involvement, issue a subpoena demanding to see messages held by third parties.
Of course, some law enforcement officials oppose tighter restrictions on e-mail access. But nothing in the bill would prevent law enforcement from doing its job or change exceptions in existing law for acting without a warrant in emergencies, when time is of the essence.
The committee measure is limited in scope; most notably, it includes no new protections for location information from cellphones or GPS systems that can be as revealing of a cellphone owner’s associations, activities and personal tastes as listening in on a conversation, for which a warrant is required.
Although the bill is not expected to advance in this lame-duck session, it sets the stage for further debate and action on digital privacy in both the Senate and the House early in the new Congress.
-
http://www.ted.com/talks/malte_spitz_your_phone_company_is_watching.html
-
Also posted on the Homeland Security thread:
U.S. NEWSDecember 12, 2012, 10:30 p.m. ET.U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens .
By JULIA ANGWIN
Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime.
Not everyone was on board. "This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public," Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.
A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect.
More
A Comparison of the 2008 and 2012 NCTC Guidelines
The NCTC Controversy -- A Timeline
Documents
NCTC Guidelines – 2012
View Interactive
.
NCTC Guidelines -- 2008
View Interactive
.
Homeland Security Department Email about the NCTC Guidelines
View Interactive
Through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with officials at numerous agencies, The Wall Street Journal has reconstructed the clash over the counterterrorism program within the administration of President Barack Obama. The debate was a confrontation between some who viewed it as a matter of efficiency—how long to keep data, for instance, or where it should be stored—and others who saw it as granting authority for unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.
Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans "reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information" may be permanently retained.
The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.
"It's breathtaking" in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.
Counterterrorism officials say they will be circumspect with the data. "The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes," said Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the parent agency for the National Counterterrorism Center.
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution says that searches of "persons, houses, papers and effects" shouldn't be conducted without "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. But that doesn't cover records the government creates in the normal course of business with citizens.
Congress specifically sought to prevent government agents from rifling through government files indiscriminately when it passed the Federal Privacy Act in 1974. The act prohibits government agencies from sharing data with each other for purposes that aren't "compatible" with the reason the data were originally collected.
Three Years of WSJ Privacy Insights
The Wall Street Journal is conducting a long-running investigation into the profound transformation of personal privacy in America.
Selected findings:
Companies today are increasingly tying people's real-life identities to their online browsing habits.
Two students are outed as gay—provoking a crisis within their families—by a Facebook privacy loophole . (10/12/12)
Suspicious spouses are taking investigations into their own hands as snooping technologies become cheaper and easier to use. (10/6/12)
Americans' license plates are now being tracked not only by the government, but also by repo men who hope to profit from the information. (10/2/12)
Google bypassed the privacy settings on millions of Web browsers on Apple iPhones and computers— tracking the online activities of people who intended that kind of monitoring to be blocked. (2/17/12)
The government follows the movements of thousands of Americans a year by secretly monitoring their cellphone records . (9/9/11)
iPhone and Android apps secretly shared data about their users, a Journal investigation found. (12/10/10)
Top apps on Facebook transmit personal identifying details to tracking companies, a Journal investigation found. (10/18/10)
One of the fastest growing online businesses is that of spying on Americans as they browse the Web. (6/30/10)
Plus, the global surveillance bazaar , a secretive phone-tracking "stingray" and RapLeaf's clever way of figuring out Web surfers' real names .
See full privacy coverage
.But the Federal Privacy Act allows agencies to exempt themselves from many requirements by placing notices in the Federal Register, the government's daily publication of proposed rules. In practice, these privacy-act notices are rarely contested by government watchdogs or members of the public. "All you have to do is publish a notice in the Federal Register and you can do whatever you want," says Robert Gellman, a privacy consultant who advises agencies on how to comply with the Privacy Act.
As a result, the National Counterterrorism Center program's opponents within the administration—led by Ms. Callahan of Homeland Security—couldn't argue that the program would violate the law. Instead, they were left to question whether the rules were good policy.
Under the new rules issued in March, the National Counterterrorism Center, known as NCTC, can obtain almost any database the government collects that it says is "reasonably believed" to contain "terrorism information." The list could potentially include almost any government database, from financial forms submitted by people seeking federally backed mortgages to the health records of people who sought treatment at Veterans Administration hospitals.
Previous government proposals to scrutinize massive amounts of data about innocent people have caused an uproar. In 2002, the Pentagon's research arm proposed a program called Total Information Awareness that sought to analyze both public and private databases for terror clues. It would have been far broader than the NCTC's current program, examining many nongovernmental pools of data as well.
"If terrorist organizations are going to plan and execute attacks against the United States, their people must engage in transactions and they will leave signatures," the program's promoter, Admiral John Poindexter, said at the time. "We must be able to pick this signal out of the noise."
Adm. Poindexter's plans drew fire from across the political spectrum over the privacy implications of sorting through every single document available about U.S. citizens. Conservative columnist William Safire called the plan a "supersnoop's dream." Liberal columnist Molly Ivins suggested it could be akin to fascism. Congress eventually defunded the program.
The National Counterterrorism Center's ideas faced no similar public resistance. For one thing, the debate happened behind closed doors. In addition, unlike the Pentagon, the NCTC was created in 2004 specifically to use data to connect the dots in the fight against terrorism.
Even after eight years in existence, the agency isn't well known. "We're still a bit of a startup and still having to prove ourselves," said director Matthew Olsen in a rare public appearance this summer at the Aspen Institute, a leadership think tank.
The agency's offices are tucked away in an unmarked building set back from the road in the woodsy suburban neighborhood of McLean, Va. Many employees are on loan from other agencies, and they don't conduct surveillance or gather clues directly. Instead, they analyze data provided by others.
The agency's best-known product is a database called TIDE, which stands for the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. TIDE contains more than 500,000 identities suspected of terror links. Some names are known or suspected terrorists; others are terrorists' friends and families; still more are people with some loose affiliation to a terrorist.
Intelligence officials met at the White House in March to discuss the NCTC proposal with John Brennan, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser.
TIDE files are important because they are used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to compile terrorist "watchlists." These are lists that can block a person from boarding an airplane or obtaining a visa.
The watchlist system failed spectacularly on Christmas Day 2009 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian man, boarded a flight to Detroit from Amsterdam wearing explosives sewn into his undergarments. He wasn't on the watchlist.
He eventually pleaded guilty to terror-related charges and is imprisoned. His bomb didn't properly detonate.
However, Mr. Abdulmutallab and his underwear did alter U.S. intelligence-gathering. A Senate investigation revealed that NCTC had received information about him but had failed to query other government databases about him. In a scathing finding, the Senate report said, "the NCTC was not organized adequately to fulfill its missions."
"This was not a failure to collect or share intelligence," said John Brennan, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser, at a White House press conference in January 2010. "It was a failure to connect and integrate and understand the intelligence we had."
As result, Mr. Obama demanded a watchlist overhaul. Agencies were ordered to send all their leads to NCTC, and NCTC was ordered to "pursue thoroughly and exhaustively terrorism threat threads." Quickly, NCTC was flooded with terror tips—each of which it was obligated to "exhaustively" pursue. By May 2010 there was a huge backlog, according a report by the Government Accountability Office.
Legal obstacles emerged. NCTC analysts were permitted to query federal-agency databases only for "terrorism datapoints," say, one specific person's name, or the passengers on one particular flight. They couldn't look through the databases trolling for general "patterns." And, if they wanted to copy entire data sets, they were required to remove information about innocent U.S. people "upon discovery."
But they didn't always know who was innocent. A person might seem innocent today, until new details emerge tomorrow.
"What we learned from Christmas Day"—from the failed underwear bomb—was that some information "might seem more relevant later," says Mr. Joel, the national intelligence agency's civil liberties officer. "We realized we needed it to be retained longer."
Late last year, for instance, NCTC obtained an entire database from Homeland Security for analysis, according to a person familiar with the transaction. Homeland Security provided the disks on the condition that NCTC would remove all innocent U.S. person data after 30 days.
After 30 days, a Homeland Security team visited and found that the data hadn't yet been removed. In fact, NCTC hadn't even finished uploading the files to its own computers, that person said. It can take weeks simply to upload and organize the mammoth data sets.
Homeland Security granted a 30-day extension. That deadline was missed, too. So Homeland Security revoked NCTC's access to the data.
To fix problems like these that had cropped up since the Abdulmutallab incident, NCTC proposed the major expansion of its powers that would ultimately get debated at the March meeting in the White House. It moved to ditch the requirement that it discard the innocent-person data. And it asked for broader authority to troll for patterns in the data.
As early as February 2011, NCTC's proposal was raising concerns at the privacy offices of both Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, according to emails reviewed by the Journal.
Privacy offices are a relatively new phenomenon in the intelligence community. Most were created at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. Privacy officers are often in the uncomfortable position of identifying obstacles to plans proposed by their superiors.
At the Department of Justice, Chief Privacy Officer Nancy Libin raised concerns about whether the guidelines could unfairly target innocent people, these people said. Some research suggests that, statistically speaking, there are too few terror attacks for predictive patterns to emerge. The risk, then, is that innocent behavior gets misunderstood—say, a man buying chemicals (for a child's science fair) and a timer (for the sprinkler) sets off false alarms.
An August government report indicates that, as of last year, NCTC wasn't doing predictive pattern-matching.
The internal debate was more heated at Homeland Security. Ms. Callahan and colleague Margo Schlanger, who headed the 100-person Homeland Security office for civil rights and civil liberties, were concerned about the implications of turning over vast troves of data to the counterterrorism center, these people said.
They and Ms. Libin at the Justice Department argued that the failure to catch Mr. Abdulmutallab wasn't caused by the lack of a suspect—he had already been flagged—but by a failure to investigate him fully. So amassing more data about innocent people wasn't necessarily the right solution.
The most sensitive Homeland Security data trove at stake was the Advanced Passenger Information System. It contains the name, gender, birth date and travel information for every airline passenger entering the U.S.
Mary Ellen Callahan, then-chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security: 'This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public.'
Previously, Homeland Security had pledged to keep passenger data only for 12 months. But NCTC was proposing to copy and keep it for up to five years. Ms. Callahan argued this would break promises the agency had made to the public about its use of personal data, these people said.
Discussions sometimes got testy, according to emails reviewed by the Journal. In one case, Ms. Callahan sent an email complaining that "examples" provided to her by an unnamed intelligence official were "complete non-sequiturs" and "non-responsive."
In May 2011, Ms. Callahan and Ms. Schlanger raised their concerns with the chief of their agency, Janet Napolitano. They fired off a memo under the longwinded title, "How Best to Express the Department's Privacy and Civil Liberties Concerns over Draft Guidelines Proposed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center," according to an email obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The contents of the memo, which appears to run several pages, were redacted.
The two also kept pushing the NCTC officials to justify why they couldn't search for terrorism clues less invasively, these people said. "I'm not sure I'm totally prepared with the firestorm we're about to create," Ms. Schlanger emailed Ms. Callahan in November, referring to the fact that the two wanted more privacy protections. Ms. Schlanger returned to her faculty position at the University of Michigan Law School soon after but remains an adviser to Homeland Security.
To resolve the issue, Homeland Security's deputy secretary, Jane Holl Lute, requested the March meeting at the White House. The second in command from Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the FBI, NCTC and the office of the director of national intelligence sat at the small conference table. Normal protocol for such meeting is for staffers such as Ms. Callahan to sit against the walls of the room and keep silent.
By this point, Ms. Libin's concern that innocent people could be inadvertently targeted had been largely overruled at the Department of Justice, these people said. Colleagues there were more concerned about missing the next terrorist threat.
That left Ms. Callahan as the most prominent opponent of the proposed changes. In an unusual move, Ms. Lute asked Ms. Callahan to speak about Homeland Security's privacy concerns. Ms. Callahan argued that the rules would constitute a "sea change" because, whenever citizens interact with the government, the first question asked will be, are they a terrorist?
Mr. Brennan considered the arguments. And within a few days, the attorney general, Eric Holder, had signed the new guidelines. The Justice Department declined to comment about the debate over the guidelines.
Under the new rules, every federal agency must negotiate terms under which it would hand over databases to NCTC. This year, Ms. Callahan left Homeland Security for private practice, and Ms. Libin left the Justice Department to join a private firm.
Homeland Security is currently working out the details to give the NCTC three data sets—the airline-passenger database known as APIS; another airline-passenger database containing information about non-U.S. citizen visitors to the U.S.; and a database about people seeking refugee asylum. It previously agreed to share databases containing information about foreign-exchange students and visa applications.
Once the terms are set, Homeland Security is likely to post a notice in the Federal Register. The public can submit comments to the Federal Register about proposed changes, although Homeland Security isn't required to make changes based on the comments.
Write to Julia Angwin at julia.angwin@wsj.com
-
Dear Marc F.,
Would you want government agents listening to your phone calls? Looking at your email? Spying on your online activity?
Chances are they have, and you didn't even know it.
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was originally designed to protect American citizens from having government wiretap their phones and eavesdrop on their conversations.
But in 2001, the Bush Administration amended FISA through the Patriot Act to allow warrantless wiretapping.
In 2008, the Obama administration further loosened these restrictions.
Today, we have a federal government that can go through citizens' private communications-telephone, email, Facebook-you name it.
We know that the federal government has looked at over 28 million electronic records since the FISA Amendment Act.
We know it has gone through 1.6 million texts.
When I was given a classified briefing this summer to investigate the extent to which the federal government is spying on citizens, I was required by law not to disclose the discussion.
But in determining how many times this has occurred, I can give you a fictitious number-gazillions.
This is not hyperbole. I can assure you, it is quite accurate in describing the number of times government has snooped though American citizens private information.
We now have a federal government that is unrestrained by law.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is looking to ram through FISA reauthorization before Christmas.
He has made it clear he certainly expects it to be done by year's end.
I don't want FISA reauthorized before Christmas. I don't want it reauthorized before the New Year.
I don't want FISA reauthorized-period.
If Reid intends on making sure government cronies can spy on private citizens without a warrant, I am intent on introducing the "Fourth Amendment Protection Act," which states:
The Fourth Amendment right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures is violated when the government acquires information voluntarily relinquished by a person to another party for a limited business purpose without the express informed consent of the person to the specific request by the government or a Warrant, upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It is amazing that I even have to introduce this as an amendment because it already is an amendment-to the Constitution of the United States.
And make no mistake-the Fourth Amendment is every bit as important to preserving our freedoms as the entire Bill of Rights.
I hope you'll join me in fighting Harry Reid and Barack Obama to protect our right to privacy.
We can't have government stepping into every aspect of our private lives without some level of judicial restraint.
This has been a core principle of American freedom and individual rights for as long as there has been an America.
It is a basic value that has long defined who we are as a nation and has separated us from less free nations.
Will you join me in helping to fight FISA reauthorization?
Neither Senator Reid nor anyone else has the right to take away the constitutional protections that have always been our birthright.
The current FISA Amendment gives a blank check to government to spy on any American, at any time and for any reason.
It goes against everything this country stands for.
It goes against every principle we fought a revolution for.
It goes against the Constitution every one of my Senate colleagues took an oath to protect.
For freedom's sake, FISA cannot stand. It should not survive.
I hope you will join me in fighting to defeat it.
In Liberty,
Senator Rand Paul
P.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is looking to ram through FISA Reauthorization before the end of the year.
You and I can't allow the trampling of our Fourth Amendment rights to continue!
-
I have come to like Rand Paul more and more over time, but these last two issues, NDAA and FISA opposition, are not his best ones IMHO.
We need plenty of protections for our civil liberties, but I don't believe that anti-terror agents hunting down clues of terrorist acts in planning too zealously is among the top 100 problems in this country.
Sen. Paul: "Would you want government agents listening to your phone calls? Looking at your email? Spying on your online activity? Chances are they have, and you didn't even know it. "
Most of the time I don't want government in my life at all, but the reality is that running down clues after a terrorist attack is too late, especially in this day of suicide attacks.
Perhaps Kentucky is not a target or terrorist rich area, 8000 miles from Yemen, but Al Qaeda has big ties here. MSP is where Zacarias Moussaoui came for 747 flight training. The Imams performed their practice run here. CAIR owns a congressman here. We have had dozens of recent, Al Qaeda related arrests in Minneapolis with terrorists in our local Somalia community recruiting for Jihad back home: http://www.adl.org/NR/exeres/D0E7DF5A-46A1-47F9-8252-784E6AFBB52C,DB7611A2-02CD-43AF-8147-649E26813571,frameless.htm
5 9/11 hijackers lived very close to my rentals in Florida as well. It is a small world.
As learned in Australia, once recruits here join the Jihad they don't limit the attacks to overseas.
I'd rather see conservatives like Rand Paul work on overturning Kelo, the fight against the taking our homes instead of making a scare out much needed counter-terrorism.
If misuse of these powers is the concern, stiffen the penalties for misuse of these powers.
-
As my posts here have shown over time, I readily admit I am not 100% consistent on this issue.
-
Being logically conflicted about a loss of civil liberty from increased anti-terror efforts seems perfectly logical to me. :-)
-
The Dawning of Domestic Drones
Published: December 25, 2012
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Save
E-mail
Share
Print
Reprints
The drones are coming to a neighborhood near you.
Related
Times Topic: Predator Drones and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
Connect With Us on Twitter
For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.
.
The unmanned aircraft that most people associate with hunting terrorists and striking targets in Pakistan are on the brink of evolving into a big domestic industry. It is not a question of whether drones will appear in the skies above the United States but how soon.
Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to quickly select six domestic sites to test the safety of drones, which can vary in size from remote-controlled planes as big as jetliners to camera-toting hoverers called Nano Hummingbirds that weigh 19 grams.
The drone go-ahead, signed in February by President Obama in the F.A.A. reauthorization law, envisions a $5 billion-plus industry of camera drones being used for all sorts of purposes from real estate advertising to crop dusting to environmental monitoring and police work.
Responding to growing concern as the public discovers drones are on the horizon, the agency recently and quite sensibly added the issue of citizens’ privacy to its agenda. Setting regulations under the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unlawful search is of the utmost importance. But since the F.A.A.’s primary mission is safety, Congress should take the matter in hand by writing privacy safeguards for the booming drone industry.
The anticipated market includes tens of thousands of police, fire and other government agencies able to afford drones lighter than traditional aircraft and costing as little as $300. Several surveillance drones are already used for border patrol, and the F.A.A. has allowed a few police departments to experiment narrowly, as in a ceiling of 400 feet for surveillance flights over the Everglades by the Miami Police Department.
Privacy worries in California prompted Alameda County officials to postpone drone plans for further study. The local sheriff insisted that what he had in mind was disaster response, not random snooping, but the local American Civil Liberties Union office claimed the plan would have permitted extensive intelligence gathering.
The A.C.L.U.’s national office is warning that while drones could have many benefits like search-and-rescue work and tracking dangerous criminal situations, the law’s lack of privacy mandates will inevitably invite “pervasive surveillance” of the public.
The idea of watchful drones buzzing overhead like Orwellian gnats may seem far-fetched to some. But Congress, in its enthusiasm for a new industry, should guarantee the strongest protection of privacy under what promises to be a galaxy of new eyes in the sky.
-
Not sure whether I have posted these previously:
1) http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2012/08/10/boeing-demonstrates-drones-that-perform-like-swarm-of-insects/
2)
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/wikileaks-americans-being-monitored-by-secret-surveillance-system-trapwire/
WikiLeaks: Americans Being Monitored by Top Secret Surveillance System ‘TrapWire’
(VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)
WikiLeaks documents reportedly reveal the existence of a secret surveillance program “more accurate than modern facial recognition technology,” which is being utilized by a clandestine organization made up of a number of former members of U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Pentagon.
The documents, comprised of emails hacked by Anonymous, identify the program as “TrapWire,” and this could be the biggest of all previous leaks if the documents turn out to contain accurate information. WikiLeaks began releasing the emails hacked from the geopolitical intelligence company Stratfor earlier this year.
“Hacktivists” with the group Anonymous took credit for hacking Stratfor on Dec. 24, 2011 and said they had collected more than five million emails from within the organization, some of which show a collaboration between Stratfor and the TrapWire creators at Abraxas, a company based in northern Virginia that is staffed with some of the most elite members of America’s intelligence community.
As much as we’d prefer not to cite the Russian-state controlled media network RT, there are no other mainstream media outlets currently covering the issue. This how RT described TrapWire based on information found in WikiLeaks documents:
Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.
Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it’s the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation’s ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.
The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing.
It may sound like something right out of a spy novel, but according to the documents, TrapWire has access to all the cameras popping up on every street corner and various other technologies and they are using that data to monitor you and anyone else they think needs to be watched via facial recognition. Talk about Big Brother.
NYPD's new super computer system is a joint venture between the city and Microsoft (Source: New York Daily News/Brian Smith)
It sounds eerily similar to a program unveiled in New York City earlier this month called the “Domain Awareness System,” created out of a partnership with Microsoft.
According to the city’s statement, the DAS “aggregates and analyzes existing public safety data streams in real time, providing NYPD investigators and analysts with a comprehensive view of potential threats and criminal activity.”
In other words, the system will link the city’s roughly 3,000 CCTV cameras, license plate readers, environmental sensors and other law enforcement databases so they can “protect” American citizens. There’s no way privacy issues could arise out of such a program.
That begs the question: If New York City is being monitored by such an invasive surveillance system, is it really that far fetched that the rest of the United States may be as well?
More from RT on the TrapWire system:
According to a press release (pdf) dated June 6, 2012, TrapWire is “designed to provide a simple yet powerful means of collecting and recording suspicious activity reports.” A system of interconnected nodes spot anything considered suspect and then input it into the system to be “analyzed and compared with data entered from other areas within a network for the purpose of identifying patterns of behavior that are indicative of pre-attack planning.”
In a 2009 email included in the Anonymous leak, Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence Fred Burton is alleged to write,“TrapWire is a technology solution predicated upon behavior patterns in red zones to identify surveillance. It helps you connect the dots over time and distance.” Burton formerly served with the US Diplomatic Security Service, and Abraxas’ staff includes other security experts with experience in and out of the Armed Forces.
What is believed to be a partnering agreement included in the Stratfor files from August 13, 2009 indicates that they signed a contract with Abraxas to provide them with analysis and reports of their TrapWire system (pdf).
(H/T:: Business Insider)
-
I know Trapwire well, I recommended it years ago to a friend that was in charge of security for a big city transit system. He decided not to use it. The breathless way it's described above makes it sound much more exciting than it is.
Yawn.
-
By all means feel free to flesh things out and bring peace to my troubled soul :-D
-
Trapwire parses through the footage of your video camera system looking for atypical behavior patterns. That might flag someone doing preoperational surveillance that you can then investigate and hopefully prevent a mass casualty attack.
-
I'm remided of the scary descriptions about a "private intelligence service" called Stratfor.
-
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/12/gov-dossiers-on-us-citizens/
-
http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/phlog/archive/2012/04/06/when-police-subpoena-your-facebook-information-heres-what-facebook-sends-cops.aspx
-
In the Privacy Wars, It's iSpy vs. gSpy
Big Brother is watching us. But we are watching back
Andy Kessler
Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Mark, thinks she's got problems? Last week she complained that a family photo posted to Facebook had been circulated on Twitter without her authorization. Well, over a few hours around town that day I counted 57 cameras—at traffic lights, various stores and the bank—and my phone told me I switched between eight different cellphone towers. We are all being watched, whether we like it or not.
So who's winning? It is a battle between you and the government—like Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy comic, but it's gSpy vs. iSpy.
There are thousands of toll booths at bridges and turnpikes across America recording your license plate. There are 4,214 red-light cameras and 761 speed-trap cameras around the country. Add 494,151 cell towers and 400,000 ATMs that record video of your transactions. New York City alone has 2,400 official surveillance cameras and recently hired Microsoft to monitor real-time feeds as part of the Orwellian-named Domain Awareness System. And that is nothing compared with England, where over four million surveillance cameras record the average Londoner 300 times a day.
Popular Mechanics magazine estimates that there are some 30 million commercial surveillance cameras in the U.S. logging billions of hours of video a week. I guarantee that you're in hundreds if not thousands of these. In the year 1984, we only had lame amber-screened PCs running Lotus 123. Now, 64 years after George Orwell sent "1984" to his publisher, we have cheap video cams and wireless links and terabyte drives and Big Brother is finally watching.
So gSpy is winning, right?
Not so fast. We are watching back. I know the precise number of red-light cameras because a website (poi-factory.com) crowdsources their locations and updates them daily for download to GPS devices. And 30 million surveillance cameras are a pittance compared with the 327 million cellphones in use across America, almost all of them with video cameras built in.
How do you think the "Don't tase me, bro" guy protesting a 2007 speech by John Kerry ever got famous? Last year, when cops at the University of California at Davis were caught on video pepper-spraying protesters, they had to pay $30,000 each to 21 students to settle. A man arrested for blocking traffic at an Occupy Wall Street protest (who was there to defend police tactics, oddly) was acquitted when smartphone photos and video showed protesters on the sidewalk, not the street. Six members of the 2004 St. John's basketball team had rape charges against them dropped when a video of the accuser's extortion demands was recorded on a player's cellphone.
Zapruder, Rodney King, the young Iranian Neda Agha-Soltan's death by gunshot after her country's rigged 2009 election. In America and increasingly across the world, iSpies are watching, too.
Both sides are getting more sophisticated. Snowboarders mount GoPro Hero cameras to their helmets to record up to eight hours of their exploits. So-called lifeloggers pin small, $199 "Memoto" cameras to their shirts and snap a photo every 30 seconds. With cheaper data storage, it is easy to envision iSpies logging audio, GPS and eventually video of our lives.
But gSpy is going further. Already a third of large U.S. police forces equip patrol cars with automatic license plate-readers that can check 1,000 plates per hour looking for scofflaws. Better pay those parking tickets because this system sure beats a broken tail light as an excuse to pull you over. U.S. Border Patrol already uses iris-recognition technology, with facial-recognition in the works, if not already deployed. How long until police identify 1,000 faces per hour walking around the streets of New York?
In September, Facebook turned off its facial-recognition technology world-wide after complaints from Ireland's Data Protection Commission. I hope they turn it back on, as it is one of the few iSpy tools ahead of gSpy deployment.
The government has easy access to our tax information, stock trades, phone bills, medical records and credit-card spending, and it is just getting started. In Bluffdale, Utah, according to Wired magazine, the National Security Agency is building a $2 billion, one-million-square-foot facility with the capacity to consume $40 million of electricity a year, rivaling Google's biggest data centers.
Some estimate the facility will be capable of storing five zettabytes of data. It goes tera, peta, exa, then zetta—so that's like five billion terabyte drives, or more than enough to store every email, cellphone call, Google search and surveillance-camera video for a long time to come. Companies like Palantir Technologies (co-founded by early Facebook investor Peter Thiel) exist to help the government find terrorists and Wall Street firms find financial fraud.
As with all technology, these tools will eventually be available to the public. Internet users created and stored 2.8 zettabytes in 2012. Facebook has a billion users. There are over 425 million Gmail accounts, which for most of us are personal records databases. But they're vulnerable. We know from the takedown of former Gen. David Petraeus that some smart legwork by the FBI (in this case matching hotel Wi-Fi tags and the travel schedule of biographer Paula Broadwell) can open up that database to prying eyes. Google has accused China of cracking into Gmail accounts.
Google gets over 15,000 criminal investigation requests from the U.S. government each year, and the company says it complies 90% of the time. The Senate last week had a chance to block the feds from being able to read any domestic emails without a warrant—which would put some restraint on gSpy—but lawmakers passed it up. Google's Eric Schmidt said in 2009, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Thanks, Eric.
From governments to individuals, the amount of information captured and stored is growing exponentially. Like it or not, a truism of digital technology is that if information is stored, it will get out. Mr. Schmidt is right. It doesn't matter whether an iSpy friend of Randi Zuckerberg tweets it or a future WikiLeaks pulls it out of the data center at Bluffdale and posts it for all to view. Gen. Petraeus knows it. Politicians yapping about "clinging to guns" or "the 47%" know it. Information wants to be free and will be. Plan for it. I'm paying my parking tickets this week.
Mr. Kessler, a former hedge-fund manager, is the author most recently of "Eat People" (Portfolio, 2011)
Copyright 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
-
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/stealth-wear-new-counter-surveillance-clothing-makes-you-invisible-to-drones_01112013
Stealth Wear: New Counter-Surveillance Clothing Makes You Invisible to Drones
Mac Slavo
January 11th, 2013
SHTFplan.com
Comments (190)
Read by 31,131 people
In early 2012 the U.S. Congress authorized the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act. Within this bill is a provision calling for the deployment of some 30,000 robotic drones over the skies of America by 2015, arguably the boldest overt domestic surveillance initiative to have ever been introduced in the land of the free. With an average of some 600 drones allocated per state, this future network of highly advanced surveillance systems promises to give law enforcement, military and intelligence assets unprecedented video and audio access into the lives of every single American.
Privacy advocates are justifiably outraged.
But whenever government attempts to institute a ban on contraband items, or pass draconian laws, or introduce new tracking and surveillance methods, rebellious elements within the target populace rapidly develop counter-strategies and technologies to marginalize the threat.
Oftentimes, billion dollar government initiatives and development projects are rendered almost useless by low-tech strategies and designs.
Artist and fashion designer Adam Harvey, who objects to the authoritarian nature of the global surveillance state, has done just that.
In an effort to counter the high-tech integrated drone surveillance systems soon to be fused into intelligence networks across the country, Harvey and a group of partners have developed a line of clothing dubbed Stealth Wear.
Making its debut on January 17th, the Stealth Wear line will include hoodies, scarves, hats, and t-shirts that will make the wearer invisible to thermal imaging cameras widely used throughout the unmanned aerial vehicle community.
The idea is that the material blocks heat signatures, captured using infrared sensors, which give people away to surveillance helicopters or drones from the skies above. [link]
The flagship Stealth Wear line will include:
■The anti-drone hoodie and anti-drone scarf: Garments designed to thwart thermal imaging, a technology used widely by UAVs.
■The XX-shirt: A x-ray shielding print in the shape of a heart, that protects your heart from x-ray radiation
■And the Off Pocket: An anti-phone accessory that allows you to instantly zero out your phone’s signal
Via: Adam Harvey Projects
-
1) I'm curious GM, what do you make of this?
2) Is there any other source reporting this?
-
1) I'm curious GM, what do you make of this?
Mostly it's nice marketing. DB should develop their own line of clothing for this demo.
2) Is there any other source reporting this?
I haven't looked.
-
Web Hunt for DNA Sequences Leaves Privacy Compromised
By GINA KOLATA
Published: January 17, 2013
The genetic data posted online seemed perfectly anonymous — strings of billions of DNA letters from more than 1,000 people. But all it took was some clever sleuthing on the Web for a genetics researcher to identify five people he randomly selected from the study group. Not only that, he found their entire families, even though the relatives had no part in the study — identifying nearly 50 people.
A study published in Science identified people from online searches of strings of DNA letters, and age and a state.
The researcher did not reveal the names of the people he found, but the exercise, published Thursday in the journal Science, illustrates the difficulty of protecting the privacy of volunteers involved in medical research when the genetic information they provide needs to be public so scientists can use it.
Other reports have identified people whose genetic data was online, but none had done so using such limited information: the long strings of DNA letters, an age and, because the study focused on only American subjects, a state.
“I’ve been worried about this for a long time,” said Barbara Koenig, a researcher at the University of California in San Francisco who studies issues involving genetic data. “We always should be operating on the assumption that this is possible.”
The data are from an international study, the 1000 Genomes Project, that is collecting genetic information from people around the world and posting it online so researchers can use it freely. It also includes the ages of participants and the regions where they live. That information, a genealogy Web site and Google searches were sufficient to find complete family trees. While the methods for extracting relevant genetic data from the raw genetic sequence files were specialized enough to be beyond the scope of most laypeople, no one expected it to be so easy to zoom in on individuals.
“We are in what I call an awareness moment,” said Eric D. Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health.
There is no easy answer about what to do to protect the privacy of study subjects. Subjects might be made more aware that they could be identified by their DNA sequences. More data could be locked behind security walls, or severe penalties could be instituted for those who invade the privacy of subjects.
“We don’t have any claim to have the answer,” Dr. Green said. And opinions about just what should be done vary greatly among experts.
But after seeing how easy it was to find the individuals and their extended families, the N.I.H. removed people’s ages from the public database, making it more difficult to identify them.
But Dr. Jeffrey R. Botkin, associate vice president for research integrity at the University of Utah, which collected the genetic information of some research participants whose identities were breached, cautioned about overreacting. Genetic data from hundreds of thousands of people have been freely available online, he said, yet there has not been a single report of someone being illicitly identified. He added that “it is hard to imagine what would motivate anyone to undertake this sort of privacy attack in the real world.” But he said he had serious concerns about publishing a formula to breach subjects’ privacy. By publishing, he said, the investigators “exacerbate the very risks they are concerned about.”
The project was the inspiration of Yaniv Erlich, a human genetics researcher at the Whitehead Institute, which is affiliated with M.I.T. He stresses that he is a strong advocate of data sharing and that he would hate to see genomic data locked up. But when his lab developed a new technique, he realized he had the tools to probe a DNA database. And he could not resist trying.
The tool allowed him to quickly find a type of DNA pattern that looks like stutters among billions of chemical letters in human DNA. Those little stutters — short tandem repeats — are inherited. Genealogy Web sites use repeats on the Y chromosome, the one unique to men, to identify men by their surnames, an indicator of ancestry. Any man can submit the short tandem repeats on his Y chromosome and find the surname of men with the same DNA pattern. The sites enable men to find their ancestors and relatives.
So, Dr. Erlich asked, could he take a man’s entire DNA sequence, pick out the short tandem repeats on his Y chromosome, search a genealogy site, discover the man’s surname and then fully identify the man?
He tested it with the genome of Craig Venter, a DNA sequencing pioneer who posted his own DNA sequence on the Web. He knew Dr. Venter’s age and the state where he lives. Bingo: two men popped up in the database. One was Craig Venter.
“Out of 300 million people in the United States, we got it down to two people,” Dr. Erlich said.
===========
Page 2 of 2)
He and his colleagues calculated they would be able to identify, from just their DNA sequences, the last names of approximately 12 percent of middle class and wealthier white men — the population that tends to submit DNA data to recreational sites like the genealogical ones. Then by combining the men’s last names with their ages and the states where they lived, the researchers should be able to narrow their search to just a few likely individuals.
Now for the big test. On the Web and publicly available are DNA sequences from subjects in the 1000 Genomes Project. People’s ages were included and all the Americans lived in Utah, so the researchers knew their state.
Dr. Erlich began with one man from the database. He got the Y chromosome’s short tandem repeats and then went to genealogy databases and searched for men with those same repeats. He got surnames of the paternal and maternal grandfather. Then he did a Google search for those people and found an obituary. That gave him the family tree.
“Now I knew the whole family,” Dr. Erlich said. And it was so simple, so fast.
“I said, ‘Come on, that can’t be true.’” So he probed and searched and checked again and again.
“Oh my God, we really did this,” Dr. Erlich said. “I had to digest it. We had so much information.”
He and his colleagues went on to get detailed family trees for other subjects and then visited Dr. Green and his colleagues at the N.I.H. to tell them what they had done.
They were referred to Amy L. McGuire, a lawyer and ethicist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She, like others, called for more public discussion of the situation.
“To have the illusion you can fully protect privacy or make data anonymous is no longer a sustainable position,” Dr. McGuire said.
When the subjects in the 1000 Genomes Project agreed to participate and provide DNA, they signed a form saying that the researchers could not guarantee their privacy. But, at the time, it seemed like so much boilerplate. The risk, Dr. Green said, seemed “remote.”
“I don’t know that anyone anticipated that someone would go and actually figure out who some of those people were,” Dr. McGuire said.
-
http://www.officer.com/news/10857951/nypd-testing-scanner-that-detects-hidden-guns?utm_source=Officer.com+Newsday+E-Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS130118003
-
http://www.officer.com/news/10857951/nypd-testing-scanner-that-detects-hidden-guns?utm_source=Officer.com+Newsday+E-Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS130118003
Bet that is easily defeated by simple countermeasures.
-
Not sure of your point here GM. Is it that it is OK to x-ray people randomly because the technology can be defeated by counter measures?
-
Not sure of your point here GM. Is it that it is OK to x-ray people randomly because the technology can be defeated by counter measures?
It doesn't appear that x-rays are an element of this technology. No, I was pointing out how this is costly and probably useless vaporware. The bad guys will adapt. I expect that clothing that defeats this technology will be the next hiphop fashion trend, should it actually see actual use on the streets of NYC.
-
So, wouldn't it be better not to run around scanning citizens at random to begin with?
-
There might be very specific scenarios where this could be useful, but trying to roll across NYC looking for guns would probably be very costly and mostly useless.
-
When Police Violate the Constitution
Published: January 25, 2013
The federal courts are bearing down on the New York City Police Department’s constitutionally suspect stop-and-frisk program, under which hundreds of thousands of citizens are stopped on the streets each year, often illegally and for no discernible reason. Earlier this month, the federal judge who is presiding over three lawsuits that challenge different parts of the program issued her harshest ruling yet, putting the city on notice that some aspects of stop and frisk are clearly unconstitutional.
The ruling, by Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan, came in the case of Ligon v. the City of New York. The case was brought on behalf of people who say they were illegally stopped, given tickets or arrested on trespassing charges in private apartment buildings, some of them in buildings where they lived.
The judge excoriated the city for flagrant indifference to the Fourth Amendment. The amendment has been interpreted by the courts to mean that police officers can legally stop and detain a person only when they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is committing, has committed or is about to commit a crime.
The department’s patently illegal strategy, the judge said, encouraged officers to “stop and question first, develop reasonable suspicion later.” The ruling focuses on detentions that occurred as people were entering or leaving one of many residential buildings in the Bronx whose managers had simply asked the department to patrol the area and arrest trespassers. The Trespass Affidavit Program, or TAP, has thus not only led to unjustified detentions but has also placed untold numbers people at risk of detention merely for entering their own homes or visiting friends and relatives. Their experiences, as described in the ruling, makes perfectly clear why the largely minority citizens targeted and victimized by the program come away feeling angry and ill used.
Describing the typical, humiliating sequence of events, the judge wrote: “The police suddenly materialize, stop the person, demand identification, and question the person about where he or she is coming from and what he or she is doing.” She added that “attempts at explanation are met with hostility; especially if the person is a young black man, he is frisked, which often involves an invasive search of his pockets; in some cases the officers then detain the person in a police van,” where he or she is grilled about drugs or weapons. In some cases, the stop escalates into an arrest, the judge noted, with the person fingerprinted and held overnight. Even if the charges are quickly dropped, the arrest can follow the person for years.
The judge tore into the city for persisting in this behavior even after prosecutors and department lawyers had become aware that unlawful stops were occurring. In 2011, for example, the Bronx prosecutor’s office become so concerned about the legality of stops made outside the TAP buildings that it routinely declined to prosecute cases based on them.
Judge Scheindlin ordered the Police Department to immediately cease trespass stops outside TAP buildings unless officers have the reasonable suspicion required by law, though she has issued a temporary stay. She has also scheduled a remedy hearing in March, at which time she could require the city to take various remedial steps, including a formal written policy explaining the circumstances under which officers can legally stop people on suspicion of trespass.
There are other procedures that can be followed without threatening law enforcement. Instead of defending the indefensible, the city should finally bring the stop-and-frisk program into line with the law.
-
http://lawenforcementtoday.com/2012/08/09/%e2%80%9cstop-and-frisk%e2%80%9d-down-increased-crime/
“Stop and Frisk” down = increased crime
August 9, 2012 in Crime Prevention, Crime Statistics, Featured, Pat Down Searches, Posts by James P Gaffney
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has made it clear. Stop and Frisk, as it is commonly known, saves lives. Some activists thoroughly oppose the program. They believe that Stop and Frisk is nothing more than a violation of one’s personal rights in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Activist also suggests that Stop and Frisk focuses on minorities. This conflict cuts like a knife into the soul of police professionalism.
The very people officers actively work to protect from harm are criticizing the police for following guidelines established by the Terry v Ohio (1968) ruling of the United States Supreme Court. As most readers know, this landmark decision introduced the “reasonable suspicion” rule for frisking a detained person to determine if he or she is armed (for the protection of the officer) or about to commit a criminal act (for the protection of the public).
I too recognize one’s personal rights must not be violated under the law. I also recognize when a police officer suspects criminality is afoot before, during, or after what appears to be a penal law misdemeanor or any felony, a police officer has the authority and duty to stop an individual(s) based solely on reasonable suspicion as directed by the Terry doctrine. As all LEOs know, Stop and Frisk is only permissible within an officer’s geographical area of employment, a protection for citizens not often reviewed in discussions of this issue.
The landmark case of Terry v Ohio serves as the Bright Line rule which guides officers in enforcing the well-being of society without violating one’s constitutional rights. This is a weighty responsibility. Taking appropriate and legal action is a challenge for LEOs. Society has made harsh judgments of law enforcement. Many have predetermined that actions taken law enforcement are illegal, prejudicial, and without merit. Nothing can be further from the truth.
This is the challenge NYPD faces. If NYPD’s mission to protect society is circumvented, then chaos will ensue. Political and personal interests must not override the commitment and responsibility of the police to all New York City residents. Other complaints typically generated are after a person is stopped pursuant to the Terry Doctrine, there is no further action taken by the police. People have indicated they were neither issued a citation nor placed under arrest. A police officer should not be criticized. The officer is to be complimented for following the guidelines set by the Terry Doctrine.
Stop and Frisk may be initiated based simply on mere reasonable suspicion. This is the lowest level of proof required by law. Since the practice is based only on suspicions, a person may be stopped, but not arrested unless probable cause for arrest is established.
In New York, a person may be stopped and subsequently frisked if an officer has reasonable suspicion to believe an individual is armed and a danger to the officer. Upon completing the frisk, the subject will be subject to arrest if the person is illegally carrying a firearm. On the other hand, if an individual is in possession of a firearm and found not to be dangerous and legally carrying, police will return the firearm.
The term Stop and Frisk is misleading. Stop and Frisk is not the proper term when referring to the Terry Doctrine. The term itself suggests wrongdoing. The proper terminology is Stop, Question, and Possibly Frisk. Does this mean stopping and frisking an individual immediately is improper or illegal? The answer is no! An immediate frisk has to do with the guidelines of the Terry Doctrine. An officer may conduct an immediate frisk if the officer reasonably suspects the person is armed and a threat.
The action taken by the police is Stop, Question, and possibly Frisk. The action taken by the police is determined by the circumstances present along with the actions of the person stopped based on reasonable suspicion. A Stop, Question, and Frisk is not prejudicial. I took the time to visit the NYPD website. I found the Stop, Question, and Possibly Frisk posted. There is no reference to Stop and Frisk as a policy. A policy is created and enforced by a procedure. The policy and procedure in place are for the betterment of society, all individuals, and law enforcement personnel.
In Terry v Ohio Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion of the Court. The Chief Justice stated that the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure is applicable to the states pursuant to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.”
Commissioner Kelly’s firm stance regarding Stop and Frisk is a demonstration of the true value of professional decision making compared to one’s idealistic opinion. Stop and Frisk is being revisited. The NYPD’s First Quarter Stop and Frisk Report for 2012 (January – March) compared to the Second Quarter Report (April – June) indicates Stop and Frisk declined by 34% and major crimes spiked by 12%. According to the New York Post, there were 27,832 major crimes in the second quarter, up from 24,751,
During the significant drop of Stop and Frisks initiated in the Second Quarter it would be prudent to remember the words spoken by the Police Commissioner: “Stop and Frisks save lives.” The drop in Stop and Frisks also occurred following public protests against the police. This decision also followed an ACLU June announcement of a free phone application for all New Yorkers to use at no expense. This was done to enable New Yorkers to record police completing a Stop and Frisk. The recording is then to be forwarded directly to the ACLU.
During the Third Quarter, a four-year-old African-American child was shot and killed in a Bronx playground. Three people are in custody. Police believe the incident is gang related. The child was killed in crossfire. In Brooklyn, a two year old girl was shot in her leg as a drive-by shooting occurred. Five other people were wounded as well. One of these victims is the father of the girl. He was shot as he used himself as a shield to protect his daughter.
Crime tends to be intra-racial. If a high-crime area has a high concentration of African-Americans, it is reasonable to believe that a higher percentage of African-Americans are stopped pursuant to a Stop, Question, and Frisk. The likelihood is the law-abiding African-Americans living and working in that community will be protected from wrongdoing, rather than have their constitutional rights abrogated.
Many officers are concerned about the situation they have now found themselves to be in. Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it!
Hopefully, the Third Quarter will improve.
Jim Gaffney, MPA is LET’s risk management /police administration contributor. He has served with a metro-New York police department for over 25 years in varying capacities, including patrol officer, sergeant, lieutenant, and executive officer. He is a member of ILEETA, IACP, and the IACSP. Jim received the Medal of Honor upon graduating from Iona College. He then completed a two year study evaluating the Victim-Offender Overlap. Jim graduated Magna Cum Laude upon receiving his Master of Science in Public Administration. He mentors the next generation of LEOs by teaching university-level criminal justice courses as an adjunct professor in the New York City area.
-
http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/10/28/should-governments-be-allowed-to-steal-your-property/
-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/8/seattle-mayor-orders-police-back-drone-use/
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/08/faa-releases-new-drone-authorization-list-see-who-applied-to-have-them/
-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/11/lots-of-buzz-about-domestic-drones/?page=all#pagebreak
-
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/consumer-security/google-for-spies-draws-ire-from-rights-groups-20130211-2e75y.html
'Google for spies' draws ire from rights groups
A multinational security firm has secretly developed software capable of tracking people's movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites.
A video obtained by the Guardian reveals how an "extreme-scale analytics" system created by Raytheon, the world's fifth largest defence contractor, can gather vast amounts of information about people from websites including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.
Raytheon says it has not sold the software - named Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology - to any clients. But the Massachusetts-based company has acknowledged the technology was shared with US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing "trillions of entities" from cyberspace.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/consumer-security/google-for-spies-draws-ire-from-rights-groups-20130211-2e75y.html
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/13/pentagon-wants-to-turn-ordinary-smartphones-into-eye-scanning-thumbprint-taking-voice-recognizing-wonder-machines/
-
http://www.dronejournalismlab.org/post/43172605458/nebraska-committee-startled-by-drone-testimony
From the article:
Schumacher’s drone concern is twofold. First, he recognizes that drones are big business, as can be observed by the research and development of weaponized and surveillance drone technology for American military use overseas. With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq winding down, Schumacher doesn’t foresee the drones or their manufacturers and lobbyists disappearing. They will simply start pitching their drones to American law enforcement agencies who, Schumacher says, will be unable to resist the new technology.
His second concern is that once drones are in the hands of American police, they will be used for surveillance in ways that will infringe upon the privacy of citizens.
-
EXACTLY SO!!!
-
So the caselaw that covers manned aircraft doesn't apply?
-
That is kind of the question, I think. And, I don't think it applies universally. Observation with the naked eye, or even binoculars, by a pilot or spotter is very different than heat sensors or cameras that can see for miles. And then there is issue of flight time.
-
And comprehensiveness. We are rapidly approaching omnipresent surveillance permanently recorded. With an increasingingly lawless government with a geometrically expanding base of laws and regulations beyond the ability of mere mortals to track, any one who fights the power, even within the rules of the game as conceived by our Consitutition, will be subject to the politics of personal destruction and financial attrition via legal defense costs that used to be aimed only at big players at the top of the game. The net tendency will be for an increasing docile flock of sheep keeping its collective head down instead of a free people.
-
The feds have manned aircraft for surveillance. You think there should be different rules depending where the pilot is located?
-
In effect, yes.
Indeed it is not even clear to me that drones will need pilots. If not yet, soon enough they can be sent up there on auto-pilot recording everybody everywhere all the time. Also, they are getting smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter, with some now the size of insects , , , that transmit video and audio.
All of this this profoundly violates my sense of what free society is.
-
Technology to surveil has long existed, including audio surveillance. Does it being attached to a drone make it different?
-
http://www.winnipegsun.com/2012/06/29/us-college-students-hijack-drone
"With Department of Homeland Security officials watching, the small group of techies from the University of Texas at Austin's Radionavigation Laboratory showed the security experts how to mimic a dummy GPS controller, aim it at the drone and start controlling it. It worked within minutes, and the students had control of the unmanned aircraft."
-
GM:
For a very bright man, you are rather obtuse on this subject. The point is that surveillance is in the process of becoming omnispresent: everywhere, all the time, of everyone, recorded for all posterity.
This is the foundation of a totalitarian state.
-
Aren't there laws that restrict surveillance that also apply to anything you might attach to a drone
-
Not according to you. You seem to think that because the police can observe someone when he leaves his home that he can be tracked, monitored, and recorded everwhere he goes.
-
There is a concept of the reasonable expectation of privacy. Do you have that when in the public realm?
-
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42701.pdf
An interesting piece on the surveillance jurisprudence as (they may be) applied to drones.
-
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42701.pdf
An interesting piece on the surveillance jurisprudence as (they may be) applied to drones.
Good article.
-
GM:
I get that, yet you continue to avoid the question I present.
-
Totalitarian societies existed long before cameras or aircraft. Why the fixation on technology?
-
Because the technology in question enables totalitarianism.
The Stasi of East Germany listened in on everyone's phone call. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution spied on and rat out free thinkers in Cuba. Knowing that everywhere one goes and everything one does is being watched and recorded would be profoundly chilling.
Look at how many people the Clinton's bullied into backing down with their politics of personal destruction. After Paula Jones got anally raped by Carville and the media running dogs, who was left to pay attention to Juanita Broderick's (I think I am remembering this name correctly) sexual assault claims? The only limits on that were that attention and the money of the Clinton money machine.
Where we are rapidly heading now is a brave new world of no limits at all.
-
So, what is your answer? Ban aircraft and cameras?
-
I do not pretend to have a complete answer to that question, but first we need to understand that the technology presents profound questions not answered by the application of doctrines that apply to human observation.
Looks at how far things are going and how fast they are getting there!
http://www.mediaite.com/online/terrifying-video-demonstrates-bug-sized-lethal-drones-being-developed-by-u-s-air-force/
Terrifying Video Demonstrates Bug-Sized Lethal Drones Being Developed By U.S. Air Force
by Andrew Kirell | 11:14 am, February 19th, 2013video» 43 comments
Looks like we have the makings of a new arms race at hand. The winner will develop the tiniest lethal drone capable of blending into a crowded cityscape.
The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf points to a National Geographic piece on the future of drone technology, including one fascinating passage on how the U.S. Air Force is developing “micro-drones” the size of tiny creatures, capable of flying through major cities unnoticed.
The science writer, John Horgan, described what information he was able to access from the government:
The Air Force has nonetheless already constructed a “micro-aviary” at Wright-Patterson for flight-testing small drones. It’s a cavernous chamber—35 feet high and covering almost 4,000 square feet—with padded walls. Micro-aviary researchers, much of whose work is classified, decline to let me witness a flight test. But they do show me an animated video starring micro-UAVs that resemble winged, multi-legged bugs. The drones swarm through alleys, crawl across windowsills, and perch on power lines. One of them sneaks up on a scowling man holding a gun and shoots him in the head.
The Air Force describes these new “micro-air” weapons as “Unobtrusive, pervasive, lethal.”
Yikes.
I share Friedersdorf’s sentiment that this video is “horrifying” — namely because it signals that drone warfare is the next arms race.
According to Horgan, however, the U.S. government “takes seriously” the potential for widespread proliferation of “micro-drone” technology among terrorists and governments:
What, one might ask, will prevent terrorists and criminals from getting their hands on some kind of lethal drone? Although American officials rarely discuss the threat in public, they take it seriously.
[...] Exercises carried out by security agencies suggest that defending against small drones would be difficult. Under a program called Black Dart, a mini-drone two feet long tested defenses at a military range. A video from its onboard camera shows a puff of smoke in the distance, from which emerges a tiny dot that rapidly grows larger before whizzing harmlessly past: That was a surface-to-air missile missing its mark. In a second video an F-16 fighter plane races past the drone without spotting it.
The answer to the threat of drone attacks, some engineers say, is more drones.
Oh, joy!
In other words: another arms race to find the smallest possible drone that can not only attack the enemy but defend against similarly undetectable micro-drones. Rather than discourage this race to the bottom, we are actively leading the charge.
Moreover, the development of these fascinatingly small weapons provides yet another secretive weapon for the military to use without any sort of oversight.
Yes, in a world with micro-drones, casualties of American drone strikes will likely decrease, given that we’d be directly killing targets rather than obliterating them and everything around them with a missile from the sky. But the possibility for such precisely targeted surveillance and assassination, at the hands of a virtually-untraceable little “bug,” gives our government one more tool to easily evade supervision and accountability.
Watch the video Horgan described, below via:
-
Out of all the mass killings in history, did any involve drones. Did Mao, Hitler or Pol Pot need drones?
-
Second post of evening:
And here's some more:
Rise of Drones in U.S. Drives Efforts to Limit Police Use
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/technology/rise-of-drones-in-us-spurs-efforts-to-limit-uses.html?src=recg
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: February 15, 2013 220 Comments
They can record video images and produce heat maps. They can be used to track fleeing criminals, stranded hikers — or just as easily, political protesters. And for strapped police departments, they are more affordable than helicopters.
Drones are becoming a darling of law enforcement authorities across the country. But they have given rise to fears of government surveillance, in many cases even before they take to the skies. And that has prompted local and state lawmakers from Seattle to Tallahassee to outline how they can be used by police or to ground them altogether.
Although surveillance technologies have become ubiquitous in American life, like license plate readers or cameras for catching speeders, drones have evoked unusual discomfort in the public consciousness.
“To me, it’s Big Brother in the sky,” said Dave Norris, a city councilman in Charlottesville, Va., which this month became the first city in the country to restrict the use of drones. “I don’t mean to sound conspiratorial about it, but these drones are coming, and we need to put some safeguards in place so they are not abused.”
In Charlottesville, police officers are prohibited from using in criminal cases any evidence obtained by drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles. Never mind that the city police department does not have a drone, nor has it suggested buying one. The police are not barred from using drones for other efforts, like search and rescue.
Mr. Norris said the advent of new policing technologies poses new policy dilemmas for his city.
Charlottesville permits the police to install cameras temporarily in areas known for drug dealing, but it has rebuffed a police request to install cameras along its downtown shopping corridor. It has also chosen not to install cameras at traffic lights to intercept speeding cars, as is common elsewhere.
“Drones are capable of taking surveillance to a whole new level,” Mr. Norris said.
Last week, the Seattle Police Department agreed to return its two still-unused drones to the manufacturer after Mayor Michael McGinn answered public protests by banning their use. On Thursday, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in Oakland, Calif., listened to the county sheriff’s proposal to use federal money to buy a four-pound drone to help his officers track suspected criminals — and then listened to raucous opposition from the antidrone lobby, including a group that uses the Twitter handle @N.O.M.B.Y., short for Not Over My Back Yard.
This week, members of Congress introduced a bill that would prohibit drones from conducting what it called “targeted surveillance” of individuals and property without a warrant.
A federal law enacted last year paved the way for drones to be used commercially and made it easier for government agencies to obtain them. The Department of Homeland Security offered grants to help local law enforcement buy them. Drone manufacturers began to market small, lightweight devices specifically for policing. Drones are already used to monitor movement on the United States’ borders and by a handful of police departments, and emergency services agencies around the country are just beginning to explore their uses.
The Federal Aviation Administration has received about 80 requests, including some from police and other government agencies, for clearance to fly drones, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which seeks to limit their use for police surveillance.
Law enforcement authorities say drones can be a cost-effective technology to help with a host of policing efforts, like locating bombs, finding lost children, monitoring weather and wildlife or assisting rescue workers in natural disasters.
“In this time of austerity, we are always looking for sensible and cost-effective methods to improve public safety,” said Capt. Tom Madigan of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department. “We are not looking at military-grade Predator drones. They are not armed.”
For now, drones for civilian use run on relatively small batteries and fly short distances. In principle, various sensors, including cameras, can be attached to them. But there is no consensus in law on how the data collected can be used, shared or stored.
=====================
State and local government authorities are trying to fill that void. As they do, they are weighing not only the demands of the police and civil libertarians but also tricky legal questions. The law offers citizens the right to take pictures on the street, for instance, just as it protects citizens from unreasonable search.
State legislatures have come up with measures that seek to permit certain uses, while reassuring citizens against unwanted snooping.
Virginia is furthest along in dealing with the issue. In early February, its state Legislature passed a two-year moratorium on the use of drones in criminal investigations, though it has yet to be reviewed by the governor.
In several states, proposals would require the police to obtain a search warrant before collecting evidence with a drone.
Arizona is among them. So is Montana. The bill’s sponsor there, Senator Matt Rosendale, a Republican, said he had no problems with drones being used for other purposes, like surveying forest fires, but he was especially vexed by the prospect of government surveillance. The manufacturers, he added, were marketing the new technology to government agencies, but neither federal nor local statutes specified how they could be used. “The technology was getting in front of the laws,” Mr. Rosendale said.
An Idaho lawmaker, Chuck Winder, said he did not want to restrict law enforcement with a search warrant requirement. He said he was drafting language that would give law enforcement discretion to evaluate if there was “reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct.”
The attention by lawmakers has delighted traditional privacy advocates. “I’ve been working on privacy issues for over a decade and rarely do we see such interest in a privacy threat that’s largely in the future,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington. “Drones are a concrete and instantly graspable threat to privacy.”
A counterargument has come from an industry group, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, which downplays fears about wholesale surveillance. The drones for sale for civilian use, it says, are nothing like the armed military grade aircraft used in wars overseas.
“They’re another tool in the law enforcement representative’s tool kit,” said Gretchen West, the group’s executive vice president. “We’re not talking about large aircraft able to surveil a large area.”
The F.A.A. is drafting rules on how drone licenses will be issued. On Thursday, it announced the creation of six sites around the country where drones of various sorts can be tested. Pressed by advocacy groups, it said it would invite public comment on privacy protections in those sites.
The agency estimates that the worldwide drone market could grow to $90 billion in the next decade.
-
No different than"assault weapon" hysteria. :roll:
-
Out of all the mass killings in history, did any involve drones. Did Mao, Hitler or Pol Pot need drones?
No. But the mass control of the state and its people did (and does) require surveillance. And as you well know, the use of drones makes that more efficient. Your disconnect on this policy area from others in which you complain of totalitarianism or similar is pecular to me.
-
So do manned aircraft, radios, computers, cameras and pretty much every other bit of technology. So why the focus on drones?
-
So do manned aircraft, radios, computers, cameras and pretty much every other bit of technology. So why the focus on drones?
Because it is current, and because it combines the other technologies.
But, it is not the only focus. Look at the backlash against stoplight cameras. Or the fear of many on the libertarian right and left about the NSA data collection site.
But, you still fail to address the issue of this unique policy space and the way that it diverges from your otherwise consistent political bent. Police and "surveillers" can do wrong. Just the president. Or the liberals.
-
Technology is morally neutral. It's how a sentient being chooses to use it. A scalpel in the hands of a rapist can come from the same production line as one used by surgeons to save lives. I'll bet there are more surveillance cameras in the average American city than anywhere in North Korea. Would you argue that we are more oppressed because of that?
-
"Technology is morally neutral."
Yup-- so is your argument that we can trust the government with the power that comes with all knowing, all seeing, all the time, recorded for all time?
"Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant." (working from memory-- George Washington said something to this effect)
Lets do a bit of a Socratic progression here.
You and your wife are walking down the street. We are in agreement that you can be observed, photographed, etc.
1-A) May someone walk alongside you listening to your conversation?
1-B) What is you don't want them to? If you stop so they can continue walking ahead, they stop with you. In other words, no matter what you do, where you go, they are there listening with you?
2-A) Now, the same two questions except this time, the person in question is a policeman. Do your answers change in any way?
2-B) Why?
-
Technology is morally neutral. It's how a sentient being chooses to use it. A scalpel in the hands of a rapist can come from the same production line as one used by surgeons to save lives. I'll bet there are more surveillance cameras in the average American city than anywhere in North Korea. Would you argue that we are more oppressed because of that?
And I am asking about the use. And you won't answer.
-
"Technology is morally neutral."
Yup-- so is your argument that we can trust the government with the power that comes with all knowing, all seeing, all the time, recorded for all time?
"Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant." (working from memory-- George Washington said something to this effect)
Lets do a bit of a Socratic progression here.
You and your wife are walking down the street. We are in agreement that you can be observed, photographed, etc.
1-A) May someone walk alongside you listening to your conversation?
Sure. Have you ever overheard a conversation in public before? Were you violating that person's rights?
1-B) What is you don't want them to? If you stop so they can continue walking ahead, they stop with you. In other words, no matter what you do, where you go, they are there listening with you?
Then you start getting into violations of various laws, such as harrassment (depending on how each state codifies it).
2-A) Now, the same two questions except this time, the person in question is a policeman. Do your answers change in any way?
A law enforcement officer in a public space that overhears a conversation can use that for evidence in a criminal case. If people attempt to evade that officer and the officer pursues them, then we get into the area where courts look at it as some kind of seizure of those persons, which must be seen as reasonable.
There are the kinds of contacts with citizens for law enforcement:
1. Consentual. Not only must the person consent, it must be in the context where a reasonable person would feel free to decline to speak and leave the area.
2. Investigative stop (Terry v. Ohio) where a person(s) is temporarily detained based on reasonable suspicion the officer can articulate.
3. Arrest, based either on probable cause or a warrant.
If the above standards are not met, the officer faces both the loss of any evidence obtained, both civil and criminal liability on both state and federal levels and punitive actions from their employer.
2-B) Why?
Again, the fourth amendment forbids unreasonable search and seizure, and in the past few centuries has fleshed out what is generally accepted as reasonable and what is not.
In the early days of the FBI, J.Edgar has his agents wiretapping phones without warrants. There wasn't any such thing as a Title III wiretap warrant in those days. Even though surveillance technology has advanced to amazing degrees since those times, there are much greater legal protections and restrictions on law enforcement now than ever before in US history.
-
http://www.fletc.gov/training/programs/legal-division/podcasts/4th-amendment-roadmap-podcasts/4th-amendment-transcripts/reasonable-expectation-of-privacy-part-1.html
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy (I) (podcast transcript)
Tim: Hi, this is Tim Miller and Jenna Solari. We’re back again talking about a 4th Amendment search. We discussed previously that the Fourth Amendment is triggered by a government intrusion into a place where one has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now Jenna, you told me who a government agent was, now let’s talk about reasonable expectation of privacy. Again, a government agent going into a place were one has a reasonable expectation of privacy triggers the 4th Amendment, correct?
Jenna: Yes, that’s right.
Tim: OK now, what’s a reasonable expectation of privacy?
Jenna: Well, a reasonable expectation of privacy, or “REP,” can be said to exist in a place where someone exhibits an actual expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable.
Tim: Sounds like a two part test.
Jenna: It is actually. There’s a subjective component, and that’s that actual expectation of privacy. So that would mean that someone actually believes that an item or an area has been concealed from public view. So, for instance, I’m in my hotel room and I want to have a private conversation with someone so I try to keep my voice low enough that I believe no one else can hear what I am saying. But then there is that second part of the two part test you mentioned, the objective test. Society has to agree that what I am doing to conceal something is reasonable, that I have taken appropriate steps to conceal something from public view. For instance, I am in that hotel room and I actually think that I am keeping my voice low enough so no one else can hear me, so I have that subjective part satisfied. But objectively, let’s say my voice is actually loud enough that someone can hear me out in the hallway where they have every right to be. So if a federal agent just happens to be standing out in the hallway and unbeknownst to me my voice is loud enough that he can hear what I am saying, then I don’t have that objective expectation of privacy. Society is not willing to agree that what I am doing is a reasonable way to keep myself from being overheard. So I wouldn’t have any REP in my conversation.
Tim: OK, well how about giving me some examples of how a person might exhibit an expectation of privacy that society is willing to accept as being reasonable.
Jenna: OK, well, I think the simplest example would be if you have an item you want conceal from public view, put it in an opaque container. Put it inside a suitcase or a backpack, or if you want to keep it in your car, put it in the glove box or the trunk where people can’t see it when they just happen to be walking by. If we’re talking about your body, we know that people typically have the highest expectation of privacy in their bodies and in their houses. So, let’s say you have a tattoo on your left bicep you don’t want people to see. The best way to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that is to put on a shirt that covers it up. Don’t walk around, you know, with a tank top on so the whole world can see your tattoo. Things inside the body have an incredibly high expectation of privacy that’s recognized by the courts. So, if you think of your skin as a giant container, everything within your body, like blood, saliva, urine -- you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in those things. Putting something inside your house, for the most part, gives you a reasonable expectation of privacy in that item, that is unless again, you put it somewhere where the whole world can see it. Let’s say you put it in your living room picture window where someone can see it from the street – then, again, society would not agree that you’ve taken reasonable steps to keep that secure from public view. But if you put it away somewhere where people couldn’t see it, then you’d have REP in that item. So things like that.
Tim: Sounds to me like if you put it inside of a container or you cover it up, society’s probably going to give you an expectation of privacy.
Jenna: Yes, that’s right.
Tim: Now, you know, a lot of kids nowadays have transparent book containers, book bags, and I think I know the answer to this, but can a child reasonably expect privacy in a transparent book bag?
Jenna: No, and that’s really the whole reason behind it. They’re required to carry transparent book bags, I assume, so that everybody can see what they have in there. So, they really wouldn’t have any reasonable expectation of privacy in those things that are inside that book bag, because again, they are out there for the whole world to see.
Tim: OK, well, you know, a trash can is a container. Can I reasonably expect privacy inside my trash can?
Jenna: That depends on where your trash can is, actually. If it’s inside your house, again, things that are inside your house usually get the highest protection from the courts so, yeah, you’d have REP in your trash, inside your trash can while it is still in your house. Now it gets a little different as the trash moves further from your house. If it’s still close to the house -- let’s say it’s just inside your garage or maybe just outside your front door -- that’s on that area that we call curtilage, and we will talk about that a little later, you probably still have REP in that trash in your trash can. It’s really when you put it out wherever collection takes place -- when you put it out on the street corner or the street in front of your house, what you have essentially done is told the whole world “I don’t want any of this any more.” You’ve abandoned that property and said “I want the trash man to take it away.” So, at that point you would not have any REP in that trash, even if you thought you did. Even if you actually thought that was private until the trash man took it, at that point society says, “no, you’ve thrown that away so you don’t have REP in that anymore.”
Tim: So, first, it has to be an actual expectation of privacy, and secondly, society has to recognize it as being reasonable.
Jenna: Yes, sir, that’s right.
Tim: OK, who can reasonably expect this privacy? For example, you know, I’ve got a house, it’s my house. I live there; I assume I can expect privacy inside my house.
Jenna: Absolutely.
Tim: Anybody else?
Jenna: Sure, if you had overnight guests in your house, let’s say friends of yours or family members came to visit and you let them stay overnight. Then you’ve essentially given them the run of at least part of your house. They have brought their private belongings in there and sort of established themselves in a room; they’d have REP inside your house. Social guests who stay for an extended period of time or who come by your house pretty frequently -- maybe they keep things in your house or inside your garage -- they may have REP in your house to some extent. I can tell you that people who wouldn’t have REP in there would be your commercial visitors, somebody who comes by just to sell you something or someone you invite just inside your front door maybe for five minutes at a time wouldn’t have any REP in your house.
Tim: So my mom and dad coming to visit for the weekend, they probably have an REP inside my house?
Jenna: Yes.
Tim: However, the paperboy coming to collect the bill would not.
Jenna: Right, the paperboy wouldn’t. Or, let’s say the pizza guy, who just steps inside for a second while you go get some cash to pay him for the pizza, he wouldn’t have any REP inside your house. He’s just that commercial visitor who stopped by for a few minutes.
Tim: How about people who rent hotel rooms? I guess the person who rents the room would have an REP inside that hotel room, would he not?
Jenna: Sure, because it’s really -- our 4th Amendment protection isn’t limited to just houses as physical structures. Really we are talking about dwellings, where people live, as least for some period of time. So, that would include a hotel room. And of course if you rented the room, you would have REP in the room. Someone else could, as well. Let’s say you and someone else go on a trip and so that person is sharing a room with you. That person has REP in there even if they weren’t the ones actually paying for it. They have a room key, which means they have the right to exclude people. They’re keeping things inside the room, so they would have REP in the room as well.
Tim: OK, I’ve got a car. I own that car; it’s my car -- I assume I have reasonable expectation of privacy in it.
Jenna: Yes, you would.
Tim: How about the passengers?
Jenna: Mere -- we call “mere passengers” is what I think you’re referring to -- usually have no REP in the car itself. And when I say “mere passenger” I mean, I’ve never borrowed your car, I don’t drive your car around, but at the end of work today I say, “Hey, Mr. Miller, can I grab a ride up to the front gate with you?” “Sure no problem,” you give me a ride up to the front gate. I’m just a mere passenger; I’m just along for a ride, so I don’t have any REP in your car or in the glove box or in the trunk. But I would retain REP in, say, I carry a briefcase and a purse from home to work every day. So when I bring those things into your car, I would still have an expectation of privacy in my belongings, I just would not have any REP in your car. Now, of course, it might be a little bit different if you shared that car with someone else -- a friend, a spouse or something like that. Now that person might have REP in the car if they are authorized to drive it around or they use it a good bit. But a mere passenger wouldn’t.
Tim: OK, why make a big deal out of all this, I mean, who has the REP? For example, suppose, I don’t know, Dillinger and I rob a bank. Dillinger owns the car, he drives the getaway car and we throw the guns and the money inside the trunk of Dillinger’s car. The cops then search the car and find that evidence. Can I get that evidence suppressed if the search is unreasonable?
Jenna: No, actually, and as I understand it it’s Dillinger’s car, right?
Tim: Right, yes.
Jenna: And you are essentially what we call a mere passenger, right? You’re basically just hitching a ride away from the bank robbery?
Tim: Check, I am just a mere passenger.
Jenna: Ok, so then, no, it would be the same situation as when you give me a ride up to the front gate -- I can’t have any REP in your glove box or in your trunk, so when the police search the car and they find the evidence in that trunk, Dillinger could complain about that search because that is his reasonable expectation of privacy. He could complain about whether it was reasonable or not. You couldn’t, though, because you don’t have any REP in that area, and we call that “no standing to object.” The only person who could object to the search is the person whose REP was intruded upon.
Tim: So, if I had no standing to object, I couldn’t object to the search even if it was unreasonable.
Jenna: That’s right.
Tim: OK, let’s take a break and come back a little bit later.
Jenna: Alright.
-
Technology is morally neutral. It's how a sentient being chooses to use it. A scalpel in the hands of a rapist can come from the same production line as one used by surgeons to save lives. I'll bet there are more surveillance cameras in the average American city than anywhere in North Korea. Would you argue that we are more oppressed because of that?
And I am asking about the use. And you won't answer.
There are well establish standards for the use of surveillance technology in the US legal system. There is no magical drone exemption from estabilished laws and caselaw.
-
I agree that there are established standards. "Well established" may be a different point. And if part of the issue of the continued use of GPS technology to surveil, at least without a warrant, is the continuous ability to gather data, the same can be said for drones that stay aloft for weeks at a time. Word is the Boeing is developing one that will stay aloft for 6 months. There is NOT "well established" standards for type of technology.
-
I agree that there are established standards. "Well established" may be a different point. And if part of the issue of the continued use of GPS technology to surveil, at least without a warrant, is the continuous ability to gather data, the same can be said for drones that stay aloft for weeks at a time. Word is the Boeing is developing one that will stay aloft for 6 months. There is NOT "well established" standards for type of technology.
What about manned aircraft? The feds have surveillance aircraft with FLIR and all sorts of goodies that they'll use with highly trained surveillance teams on the ground to surveil sophisticated bad guys who are well trained in counter surveillance. I'm not aware of any warrant requirement for that. Should there be?
What is the difference if a covert entry team places surveillance devices with the warrants to do so inside a home or business or a bug size drone zips inside?
http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm00028.htm
28 Electronic Surveillance—Title III Applications
The Application should meet the following requirements:
It must be prepared by an applicant identified as a law enforcement or investigative officer. The application must be in writing, signed by the United States Attorney, an Assistant United States Attorney, and made under oath. It must be presented to a Federal district court or court of appeals judge and be accompanied by the Department's authorization memorandum signed by an appropriate Department official and a copy of the most recent Attorney General's Order designating that official to authorize Title III applications. The application may not be presented to a magistrate. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510(9) and 2516(1); see also In re United States of America, 10 F.3d 931, 935-38 (2d Cir. 1993).
It must identify the type of communications to be intercepted. "Wire communications" include "aural transfers" (involving the human voice) that are transmitted, at least in part by wire, between the point of origin and the point of reception, i.e., telephone calls. 18 U.S.C. § 2510(1). This includes cellular phones, cordless phones, voice mail, and voice pagers, as well as traditional landline telephones. "Oral communications" are communications between people who are together under circumstances where the parties enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy. 18 U.S.C. § 2510(2). "Electronic communications" include text messages, email, non-voice computer and Internet transmissions, faxes, communications over digital-display paging devices, and, in some cases, satellite transmissions. Communications over tone-only paging devices, data from tracking devices (as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 3117), and electronic funds transfer information are not electronic communications under Title III. 18 U.S.C. § 2510(12).
It must identify the specific Federal offenses for which there is probable cause to believe are being committed. The offenses that may be the predicate for a wire or oral interception order are limited to only those set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 2516(1). In the case of electronic communications, a request for interception may be based on any Federal felony, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2516(3).
It must provide a particular description of the nature and location of the facilities from which, or the place where, the interception is to occur. An exception to this is the roving interception provision set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 2518(11)(a) and (b). The specific requirements of the roving provision are discussed in USAM 9-7.111. Briefly, in the case of a roving oral interception, the application must show, and the court order must indicate, that it is impractical to specify the location(s) where oral communications of a particular named subject are to be intercepted. 18 U.S.C. § 2518(11)(a)(ii) and (iii). In the case of a roving wire or electronic interception, the application must state, and the court order must indicate, that a particular named subject's actions could have the effect of thwarting interception from a specified facility. 18 U.S.C. § 2518(11)(b)(ii) and (iii). The accompanying DOJ document authorizing the roving interception must be signed by an official at the level of an Assistant Attorney General (including Acting AAG) or higher. 18 U.S.C. § 2518(11)(a)(i) and (b)(i). Further guidance on roving interceptions may be found on the DOJNet site of the Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU), Office of Enforcement Operations (OEO).
It must identify, with specificity, those persons known to be committing the offenses and whose communications are to be intercepted. In United States v. Donovan, 429 U.S. 413, 422-32 (1977), the Supreme Court held that 18 U.S.C. § 2518(1)(b)(iv) requires the government to name all individuals whom it has probable cause to believe are engaged in the offenses under investigation, and whose conversations it expects to intercept over or from within the targeted facilities. It is the Criminal Division's policy to name as subjects all persons whose involvement in the alleged offenses is indicated, even if not all those persons are expected to be intercepted over the target facility or at the target location.
It must contain a statement affirming that normal investigative procedures have been tried and failed, are reasonably unlikely to succeed if tried, or are too dangerous to employ. 18 U.S.C. § 2518(1)(c). The applicant may then state that a complete discussion of attempted alternative investigative techniques is set forth in the accompanying affidavit.
It must contain a statement affirming that the affidavit contains a complete statement of the facts—to the extent known to the applicant and the official approving the application—concerning all previous applications that have been made to intercept the oral, wire, or electronic communications of any of the named subjects or involving the target facility or location. 18 U.S.C. § 2518(1)(e).
In an oral (and occasionally in a wire or electronic) interception, it must contain a request that the court issue an order authorizing investigative agents to make all necessary surreptitious and/or forcible entries to install, maintain, and remove electronic interception devices in or from the targeted premises (or device). When effecting this portion of the order, the applicant should notify the court as soon as practicable after each surreptitious entry.
When requesting the interception of wire communications over a cellular telephone, it should contain a request that the authorization and court order apply not only to the target telephone identified therein, but also to: 1) any change in one of several potential identifying numbers for the phone, including the electronic serial number (ESN), International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, International Mobile Equipment Identification (IMEI) number, Mobile Equipment Identifier (MEID) number, or Urban Fleet Mobile Identification (UFMI) number; and 2) any changed target telephone number when the other identifying number has remained the same. Model continuity language for each type of identifier may be obtained from ESU. With regard to a landline phone, it should request that the authorization and court order apply not only to the target telephone number identified therein, but also to any changed telephone number subsequently assigned to the same cable, pair, and binding posts used by the target landline telephone. No continuity language should be included when the target telephone is a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone. The application should also request that the authorization apply to background conversations intercepted in the vicinity of the target phone while the phone is in use. See United States v. Baranek, 903 F.2d 1068, 1070-72 (6th Cir. 1990).
It must contain, when concerning the interception of wire communications, a request that the court issue an order directly to the service provider, as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2510(15), to furnish the investigative agency with all information, facilities, and technical assistance necessary to facilitate the ordered interception. 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(a)(ii). The application should also request that the court direct service providers and their agents and employees not to disclose the contents of the court order or the existence of the investigation. Id.
For original and spinoff applications, it should contain a request that the court's order authorize the requested interception until all relevant communications have been intercepted, not to exceed a period of thirty (30) days from the earlier of the day on which the interception begins or ten (10) days after the order is entered. 18 U.S.C. § 2518(5). For extensions, it should contain a request that the thirty-day period be measured from the date of the court's order.
It should contain a statement affirming that all interceptions will be minimized in accordance with Chapter 119 of Title 18, United States Code, as described further in the affidavit. 18 U.S.C. § 2518(5).
[updated October 2012]
-
Did you read the CRS Report I posted yesterday that you complimented?
-
Yes.
Did you read the CRS Report I posted yesterday that you complimented?
-
I have taken the liberty of editing my previous words a bit with the intention of improving the clarity of my expression:
Lets do a bit of a Socratic progression here. You and your wife are walking down the street. We are in agreement that you can be observed, photographed, etc.
1-A) May someone walk alongside you listening to your conversation?
GM: Sure. Have you ever overheard a conversation in public before? Were you violating that person's rights?
MARC: Of course not, so we are good so far.
1-B) What if you don't want them to listen to you conversation? Do they have a right to listen because you are in a public place? What if you stop so they can continue walking ahead, but they stop with you? In other words, no matter what you do, where you go, they are there listening with you? Is this OK? If not, why not?
GM Then you start getting into violations of various laws, such as harrassment (depending on how each state codifies it).
MARC: Now we are getting somewhere! We agree that you and your wife should be able to be free to have a conversation in a public place (walking down the street) without someone listening in if you don't want them to listen in. To listen in when someone is trying to keep their conversation private is harassment. So, why should the State be able to listen in to anyone anywhere with listening devices unbeknownst to those being recorded?
2-A) Now, the same two questions except this time, the person in question is a policeman. Do your answers change in any way?
GM: A law enforcement officer in a public space that overhears a conversation can use that for evidence in a criminal case. If people attempt to evade that officer and the officer pursues them, then we get into the area where courts look at it as some kind of seizure of those persons, which must be seen as reasonable.
There are the kinds of contacts with citizens for law enforcement:
1. Consentual. Not only must the person consent, it must be in the context where a reasonable person would feel free to decline to speak and leave the area.
2. Investigative stop (Terry v. Ohio) where a person(s) is temporarily detained based on reasonable suspicion the officer can articulate.
3. Arrest, based either on probable cause or a warrant.
If the above standards are not met, the officer faces both the loss of any evidence obtained, both civil and criminal liability on both state and federal levels and punitive actions from their employer.
MARC: True, but not really responsive. My question is whether the policeman may follow us to listen to our conversation just because he feels like it.
2-B) Why?
Again, the fourth amendment forbids unreasonable search and seizure, and in the past few centuries has fleshed out what is generally accepted as reasonable and what is not.
In the early days of the FBI, J.Edgar has his agents wiretapping phones without warrants.
MARC: Was this legal?!?
GM: There wasn't any such thing as a Title III wiretap warrant in those days. Even though surveillance technology has advanced to amazing degrees since those times, there are much greater legal protections and restrictions on law enforcement now than ever before in US history.
MARC: Again, not really responsive. The question I am asking has to to with everyone being monitored everywhere all the time. Two people, e.g. a husband and wife, are in a public place-- and apparently we are in agreement that to follow them in order to listen to them is "harassment"-- so why is no problem presented when hidden listening devices are involved?
-
Yes.
Did you read the CRS Report I posted yesterday that you complimented?
Then you understand that there may well be constitutional issues about manned vs. unmanned flight surveillence. Or at least, you've read some discussion of them.
-
Yes.
Did you read the CRS Report I posted yesterday that you complimented?
Then you understand that there may well be constitutional issues about manned vs. unmanned flight surveillence. Or at least, you've read some discussion of them.
Yes. Though I see no valid point that would differentiate manned vs. unmanned aircraft. The "pervasive surveillance" concept recently created from whole cloth is unpersuasive to me.
-
a) Would you regard what is happening in Britain now as pervasive surveillance?
b) Do you oppose pervasive surveillance in concept?
-
MARC: Now we are getting somewhere! We agree that you and your wife should be able to be free to have a conversation in a public place (walking down the street) without someone listening in if you don't want them to listen in. To listen in when someone is trying to keep their conversation private is harassment. So, why should the State be able to listen in to anyone anywhere with listening devices unbeknownst to those being recorded?
No, you can have a conversation in a public space with other members of the public potentially overhearing your conversation, thus you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. People talking in a public place usually discuss things they are not concerned with others overhearing, or assume no one is paying attention to their conversation. If you are disturbed by the visible interest shown by another, you can change the topic or move to another location. If, in attempting to move away from the person, they being to pursue you, then it changes the situation. But listening to a conversation in a public place where you are lawfully present isn't a crime in any jurisdiction that I'm aware of.
"So, why should the State be able to listen in to anyone anywhere with listening devices unbeknownst to those being recorded?"
It can't, absent a Title III warrant. "The Fourth Amendment provides no protection for what 'a person knowingly exposes to the public.' Katz v. United States"
-
a) Would you regard what is happening in Britain now as pervasive surveillance?
I don't know enough about living in the UK to say. As a policing strategy, I think the UK's use of cameras hasn't proven to be effective.
b) Do you oppose pervasive surveillance in concept?
Depends how you define that. Ever live in a small town where most everyone knows you, knows your parents and grandparents? Would that fall under your definition? What sort of privacy did Thomas Jefferson enjoy in his day? Was he the center of public attention in his time?
-
https://ssd.eff.org/your-computer/govt/privacy
Public places. It may sound obvious, but you have little to no privacy when you are in public. When you are in a public place — whether walking down the sidewalk, shopping in a store, sitting in a restaurant or in the park — your actions, movements, and conversations are knowingly exposed to the public. That means the police can follow you around in public and observe your activities, see what you are carrying or to whom you are talking, sit next to you or behind you and listen to your conversations — all without a warrant. You cannot necessarily expect Fourth Amendment protection when you’re in a public place, even if you think you are alone. Fourth Amendment challenges have been unsuccessfully brought against police officers using monitoring beepers to track a suspect’s location in a public place, but it is unclear how those cases might apply to more pervasive remote monitoring, like using GPS or other cell phone location information to track a suspect’s physical location.
-
Unless a meaningful distinction can be made between drone surveillance and more traditional
forms of government tracking, existing jurisprudence suggests that a reviewing court would likely
uphold drone surveillance conducted with no individualized suspicion when conducted for
purposes other than strict law enforcement.
I'm still waiting for that meaningful distinction between manned and unmanned aircraft.
-
"If, in attempting to move away from the person, they being to pursue you, then it changes the situation"
BINGO! We have a winner!
GM, of course I get the point about REP in public places. However, before the advent of the technology that is coming on stream that we are discussing here, it was possible to walk down the street and know whether someone was in earshot or not. In effect what is coming into being now is that because we cannot tell whether we are being observed, listened to etc. we cannot "move away". We can be "pursued" without even realizing it.
Please note well that the subject matter of the conversation need not be criminal, it may simply be PRIVATE.
The standards you apply would not prevent what , , , pardon the expression , , , REASONABLE PEOPLE would reasonably expect to be private-- a conversation walking down the street with no one in ear shot.
-
Which is why members of the Gambino crime family, knowing they were under "pervasive surveillance" by the FBI and the NYPD would walk outside to discuss "sensitive matters". The FBI then obtained a Title III warrant and placed "bugs" to record those conversations, which were later used in court.
-
So therefore drones and surveillance cameras are not allowed to record audio without a warrant?
-
I would expect that a bug sized drone "bugging" someone would require a Title III warrant.
-
a) "I would expect that a bug sized drone "bugging" someone would require a Title III warrant."
WHY?
b)What about microphoning a public street in a manner analogous to surveillance cameras?
-
The laws that restrict audio do not restrict video surveillance. This is why people can generally use "nanny cams" w/out audio.
-
Yes.
Did you read the CRS Report I posted yesterday that you complimented?
Then you understand that there may well be constitutional issues about manned vs. unmanned flight surveillence. Or at least, you've read some discussion of them.
Even though it is now "well established"?
Yes. Though I see no valid point that would differentiate manned vs. unmanned aircraft. The "pervasive surveillance" concept recently created from whole cloth is unpersuasive to me.
-
I think it's a mistake by the SCOTUS, lacking an understanding of complex criminal investigations and no small amount of technologies.
Organized crime groups are often the focus of "pervasive surveillance" for years before the first indictment or arrest warrants are issued.
-
http://www.dickmorris.com/no-drones-in-the-u-s-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports
-
http://www.dickmorris.com/no-drones-in-the-u-s-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports
:roll:
-
Alternative Tips for Avoiding a U.S. Drone Strike
Hiding from the U.S. government and media need not involve smearing one's self with mud.
by
Oleg Atbashian
Bio
February 25, 2013 - 6:24 pm
Al-Qaeda operatives: forget about that list of 22 crude anti-drone tactics discovered in an abandoned building in Mali. If those tactics had been genuinely useful, why did al-Qaeda leave there?
Granted, rubbing a mixture of mud and sugar on yourself and your vehicles could make you partially invisible to the next drone — but wouldn’t the wiser tactic be to become completely invisible to the entire U.S. government and mass media altogether?
All it takes is learning a few useful facts about the American political establishment: these 22 alternative tips will help you avoid detection, generally by encouraging Washington to either pretend you don’t even exist or to alter your public image until you become unrecognizable — even to yourself.
Alternative Tips for Avoiding U.S. Drone Strikes
1.Join the church where Al Sharpton is a preacher. No one knows where it is.
2.If you can’t find it, join the church Obama frequents.
3.If you can’t find that: register as a Republican Senate candidate from New York, New Jersey, or California.
4.Get a federal “green energy” loan, then declare bankruptcy. The U.S. government will cover for you.
5.Proclaim you are a victim of black-on-black crime. The media will render you invisible.
6.Come out as a black conservative. The media will render you unrecognizable.
7.If you are a woman: confess that Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy once propositioned you.
8.Hide in the back of a Massachusetts senator’s submerged car. It will buy you at least a few hours.
9.Become a member of Obama’s Job Council.
10.Insert yourself in the next 2,000-page bill.
11.Sell birth control in the vicinity of Sandra Fluke’s residence.
12.“Hi, I’m Jon Huntsman.”
13.Pretend you’re a salad; the first lady won’t spot you.
14.Never walk in New York holding a 16oz Styrofoam soda cup.
15.Never drink from a bottle of water in front of a camera. This will interest U.S. media 24/7 for days.
16.Get in line at the DMV or another government office.
17.Impersonate an American taxpayer.
18.Hide in plain sight in Benghazi.
19.Camp out at Obama’s shooting range; no one is ever there.
20.Stay where Obama keeps his college transcripts, U.S. passport records, or financial records. You will never be disclosed.
21.Set up in one of Chicago’s highest murder-rate zones. A truckload of fighters with RPGs will go undetected.
22.Hold a sign, preferably bilingual, declaring a “Drone-Free Zone.”
These 22 tips for avoiding drones by al Qaeda came from several People’s Cube writers and appeared on Twitter under the hashtags #AlQaedaTipsToAvoidDrones and #TipsForDodgingDrones.
-
:lol:
-
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/scotus-surveillance-challenge/
-
http://washingtonexaminer.com/abbott-would-consider-state-owned-drones-for-border-security/article/2522582
Abbott would consider state-owned drones for border security
February 26, 2013 | 10:14 am | Modified: February 26, 2013 at 10:20 am
Mark Tapscott
Executive Editor
The Washington Examiner
✉ Email AuthorE@mtapscott DMark on FB
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told a gathering of reporters in Washington, D.C. today that he would consider using state-owned drones in securing his state's border with Mexico.
Asked if Texas should buy its own drones for use in border security, Abbott said "I would, it would be something to think about because with the drone you can actually see what is happening on the ground and it could help establish whether those objective criteria were being met."
Abbott acknowledged the potential for invasion of privacy problems with drones but said he believed those worries could be satisfied.
Earlier in the discussion, Abbott listed having objective criteria for determining whether a border area is sufficiently safe and secure for residents as a pre-requisite for resolution of immigration issues currently being debated in Congress.
Drones have become very much in the public consciousness in recent years as a result of their effective use by the U.S. military in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups.
The drones are pilotless, silent and deadly when armed with Hellfire missiles. The discussion with Abbott did not address whether state-owned drones would be armed or unarmed.
Civil liberties advocates and conservatives have become concerned in recent weeks, however, with the federal government's apparent use of drones over the continental United States, fearing invasion of privacy and illegal search violations of the Constitution.
Legislation banning the official use of drones is currently pending in more than a dozen states, including Illinois, Washington, Virginia, Montana, California, Oregon, Texas, Nebraska, Missouri, North Dakota, Florida, Maine, and Oklahoma.
Abbott has been mentioned as a possible candidate to succeed Texas Gov. Rick Perry in 2014. Abbott has been a leader among state attorneys general in challenging Obamacare and several Environmental Protection Agency regulations in federal court.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of The Washington Examiner.
-
http://rt.com/usa/darpa-conversations-lease-crowdsourcing-809/
From the article:
"Imagine living in a world where every errant utterance you make is preserved together,” Beckhusen writes in an article this week that explores a Defense Department project that’s been undertaken by its Darpa laboratories and is now in the hands of a University of Texas computer scientists named Matt Lease.
-
:-o :-o :-o :x :x :x :x :x :x
-
Web-connected cars bring privacy concerns
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/web-connected-cars-bring-privacy-concerns/2013/03/05/d935d990-80ea-11e2-a350-49866afab584_story.html
...
More than 60 percent of vehicles worldwide will be connected directly to the Internet by 2017, up from 11 percent last year, predicts ABI Research. In North America and Europe, that percentage is likely to reach 80 percent.
Many cars already record their speed, direction and gear setting, as well as when brakes activate and for how long. Newer systems also can track whether road surfaces are slick or whether the driver is wearing a seat belt — information potentially valuable to police and insurance companies investigating crashes. (Some car insurance companies already monitor driving behavior in exchange for discounted rates.)
...
One of the prototype vehicles on display here, a dark blue Cadillac ATS sedan, was outfitted with OnStar, streaming video, music apps and cameras aimed at both the interior and exterior of the car. In demonstrations, one of the car’s interior cameras took short video clips of occupants that were incorporated in animated sequences broadcast on the dashboard video screen.
Stefan Cross, an executive with public relations firm Weber Shandwick, which was assisting in GM’s announcement of the new technology, said one possible feature would alert owners by text message if their car is bumped or hit. Owners might then be able to activate the exterior cameras remotely for immediate visual reconnaissance.
“It allows somebody to stay connected to your car even if you’re not in it,” he said.
Cross said GM would protect the privacy of its customers, even as the volume of data increases. “We have that data. We’re just not prepared to release it to third parties.”
Yet experts say that in the absence of strong national privacy laws, valuable data often leaks out. Any information produced by a vehicle and transmitted over the Internet ends up on servers, making it a potential target for authorities, lawyers engaged in court cases or hackers.
-
It's my understanding that all Chevy Dolts currently send smoke signals for help when bursting into flame.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/technology/google-pays-fine-over-street-view-privacy-breach.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130313
-
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/drones-are-price-perpetual-warfare-state
From the article:
Texas A&M University Professor Christopher Layne writes in “Kant or Cant: The Myth of Democratic Peace” that the greater the external threat a state faces or believes that it does, the more autocratic its foreign policy making process will be and the more centralized its political structures will become. Layne argues that external threats necessitate a powerful governmental apparatus to mobilize resources for national security purposes; in turn, the more likely these states are to adopt statist forms of democracy or even authoritarian structures. As we have witnessed with past conflicts, and especially since 9/11, war concentrates power in the executive branch and thus expands the limits placed on our constitutional republic.
-
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/drones-are-price-perpetual-warfare-state
From the article:
Texas A&M University Professor Christopher Layne writes in “Kant or Cant: The Myth of Democratic Peace” that the greater the external threat a state faces or believes that it does, the more autocratic its foreign policy making process will be and the more centralized its political structures will become. Layne argues that external threats necessitate a powerful governmental apparatus to mobilize resources for national security purposes; in turn, the more likely these states are to adopt statist forms of democracy or even authoritarian structures. As we have witnessed with past conflicts, and especially since 9/11, war concentrates power in the executive branch and thus expands the limits placed on our constitutional republic.
What's the price for not fighting back?
-
Losing without a fight.
And now a question for you: What is the price of letting statists claim WAR! (on drugs, on poverty, on savers, on whatever) as a basis for increasing the State's power over a free people?
-
Losing without a fight.
And now a question for you: What is the price of letting statists claim WAR! (on drugs, on poverty, on savers, on whatever) as a basis for increasing the State's power over a free people?
Any policy requires a critical analysis of cost/benefits.
-
Agreed. :-)
-
GM et al:
Here's an article about micro-drones.
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/micro-drones-are-real-heres-the-horror-inducing-video-to-prove-it-20130220/
Any concerns about these sorts of capabilities in the domestic context?
-
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/us-plan-calls-more-scanning-private-web-traffic-email-1C9001922
-
GM et al:
Here's an article about micro-drones.
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/micro-drones-are-real-heres-the-horror-inducing-video-to-prove-it-20130220/
Any concerns about these sorts of capabilities in the domestic context?
I think there are applicable legal standards already in place that would cover this technology, as we've already discussed.
-
What you miss, GM, is that with new technology comes new questions. As with wire tapping, aircraft surveillance, heat detection devices and the like, there is not a standing precedent exactly for this technology. This means that there exists a questions about whether the legal standards are, indeed, "applicable."
-
And what so those legal standards say GM?
-
What you miss, GM, is that with new technology comes new questions. As with wire tapping, aircraft surveillance, heat detection devices and the like, there is not a standing precedent exactly for this technology. This means that there exists a questions about whether the legal standards are, indeed, "applicable."
Crafty, do you know why hot links are being made without posters' intent? "Surveillance" doesn't lead to anything I posted.
-
What you miss, GM, is that with new technology comes new questions. As with wire tapping, aircraft surveillance, heat detection devices and the like, there is not a standing precedent exactly for this technology. This means that there exists a questions about whether the legal standards are, indeed, "applicable."
If law enforcement uses a killer micro-drone to zip up a hostage taker's nose and detonates an explosive charge, it's just like using a SWAT Precision Marksman to put a .308 round into his cranial cavity. Graham V. Connor applies in both cases.
If a police aircraft is used, the same caselaw applies if the pilot is in the aircraft or sitting in a cubicle a distance away.
Hester v. US, 265 U.S. 57 (1924)-the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their 'persons, houses, papers and effects,' is not extended to the open fields.
California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207(1986)-The Fourth Amendment simply does not require police traveling in the public airways at 1000 feet in a fixed wing aircraft to obtain a warrant in order to observe what is visible to the naked eye.
Dow Chemical Co. v. United States, 476 U.S. 227(1986)-The use of vision enhancement equipment accessible to the public to examine open fields from a plane is permissible.
United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294 (1987)-The warrantless naked-eye observation of an area protected by the Fourth Amendment from an open field is not unconstitutional.
Florida v. Riley, 488 US 445 (1989)-Viewing contraband located on private property from a helicopter flying at 400ft. falls within the "plain view" doctrine and is not a search. The helicopter must be operated at a level that the general public can operate.
US v. Ishmael, 48 F.3d 850 (5th Cir. 1995)-The use of a thermal imager in an open field does not offend the Fourth Amendment.
-
Hypothetical:
Citizen is in backyard having verbal fight with his wife. It is rather loud. There is a fence around the yard. Beyond the fence are open fields with no vegetation. There are no helicopters overhead. However, there is an insect sized drone (i.e. for all practical purposese it is visually and auditorily undetectable) hovering just outside the fence.
Legal under the Fourth or not?
-
Hypothetical:
Citizen is in backyard having verbal fight with his wife. It is rather loud. There is a fence around the yard. Beyond the fence are open fields with no vegetation. There are no helicopters overhead. However, there is an insect sized drone (i.e. for all practical purposese it is visually and auditorily undetectable) hovering just outside the fence.
Legal under the Fourth or not?
Would a person with normal hearing standing in that public place be able to hear that? Perhaps a passing patrol car with windows down or an officer walking a beat, or a citizen who might call it in?
-
http://www.luckygunner.com/12ga-3-uranium-drone-load-tacnition-5-rounds
(http://cdn5.luckygunner.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/45228737f337fd7e2b88abba27d7c745/d/r/drone-loads-product-image-2.jpg)
Details
Big Brother is watching, and with modern technology, if Big Brother can see it, he can turn it into a giant smoking crater with just the press of a button. Even your secret remote wilderness bunker is no match for today’s military drones. In partnership with Tacnition Ammo, Lucky Gunner is happy to introduce a new way for you to fight back against the All Seeing Eye with our new anti-drone shotgun loads.
Years of research and development have gone into these highly effective 12 gauge shells that can turn even Joe Biden’s double barrel shotgun into an instant anti-aircraft platform. Specially formulated propellant is capable of launching 9 pellets of depleted uranium rounds up to 1 km straight up into the air. With accurate shot placement, this armor piercing buckshot will disable vital systems on modern military drones. At minimum, the force of impact will disable navigation systems, but in over 60% of our field tests, the drones were incapable of remaining airborne after contact with our Anti-Drone Loads.
NOTE: Drone Loads are intended for entertainment use only and not intended to be used in any manner not in accordance with federal and local laws. Lucky Gunner assumes no responsibility for any illegal activity involving Tacnition Drone Ammo.
-
Hypothetical:
Citizen is in backyard having verbal fight with his wife. It is rather loud. There is a fence around the yard. Beyond the fence are open fields with no vegetation. There are no helicopters overhead. However, there is an insect sized drone (i.e. for all practical purposese it is visually and auditorily undetectable) hovering just outside the fence.
Legal under the Fourth or not?
Would a person with normal hearing standing in that public place be able to hear that? Perhaps a passing patrol car with windows down or an officer walking a beat, or a citizen who might call it in?
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy (II) (podcast transcript)
Miller: Hey, this is Tim Miller and Jennifer Solari. We’re back again talking about Reasonable Expectation of Privacy. Jenna I’ve got stuff in my house that can be seen through the picture window. You’ve told me that I’ve probably got a reasonable expectation of privacy inside of my house. Correct?
Solari: Yes.
Miller: Well, I’ve got stuff in my house that can be seen through the picture window. If a government agent is sitting out on the sidewalk, they can look inside that picture window and see things that are inside my house. I think I know the answer to this; but, does the Fourth Amendment forbid government agents from looking at it without a warrant?
Solari: No, absolutely not. Essentially, that would mean that agents who have every right to be where they are, would be obligated to cover their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears and hold their noses when they come across evidence that just happens to float by or be within public view. Mr. Keith Hunsucker coined the term, “right to be, right to see.” And the situation you gave me, that government agent is just standing out on a public sidewalk, where he has every right to be, should he happen to turn his head and see something illegal, say a marijuana plant or something in your picture window, then he’d have every right to be looking at that. And as we talked about earlier, you do have REP inside your house, but if you put something in an area where it’s exposed to the whole world, then you no longer really have any REP in that item, the agent would be able to see that, and there’s no problem with that.
Miller: So it sounds to me like a government agent could look inside the house, gather information from a vantage point, or where he has a right to be, and use that to support a warrant.
Solari: That’s right. And, without any other information, that’s really what the agent would be limited to doing. Just because the agent can see something from a public place, doesn’t necessarily mean that the agent can then physically enter your house to grab that contraband. Without more facts, all the agent could really do is just gather that information with his senses and then use it to try to establish probable cause to get a warrant.
Miller: So it’s right to be, right to see. Anything else?
Solari: Sure, well it’s right to be, right to see, hear, smell as long as the agent has a right to stand or sit wherever he or she finds himself. So, from a public sidewalk like you said the agent could see through a window into a house - there’s no problem with that. Of vehicles, say the agent’s walking through a parking lot on his way to the store and he happens to look into a person’s vehicle, and sees some contraband just laying there on the back seat. Again, the agent has a right to be in that parking lot just like anyone else, so there’s no problem looking right into that car.
Miller: Let me stop you just for a second. A lot of these vehicles now a days have the tinted windows.
Solari: Right.
Miller: Can that agent get pretty nosey and just stick his face right up against that window and look inside?
Solari: Sure can. Because it’s in a public area and that’s where you’d expect to find just about anyone. So as long as that agent has a right to be where he is, sure he could put his face right up to your car window and then use whatever information he’s able to gain with his senses just by looking inside.
I think we talked about a situation on a previous Podcast, where I’m in my hotel room, having a conversation about an illegal transaction of some sort, and there’s an agent standing out in the hotel room hallway listening to my conversation on the other side of the door. Now, that hallway is where you would expect just about anybody to be, housekeeping or room service. So, a government agent certainly has ever right to be there. And, if I happen to be talking loudly enough, so that agent can hear me - either by standing outside or even putting his ear right up against that door - he can do that. If he can hear me, then he can use that information to establish probable cause.
-
“right to be, right to see.”
In my hypothetical, the husband and wife, looking around can reasonably assume they are alone; doesn't it matter that the policeman can's be seen?
-
“right to be, right to see.”
In my hypothetical, the husband and wife, looking around can reasonably assume they are alone; doesn't it matter that the policeman can's be seen?
If someone is yelling inside a home or apartment, is it possible that they can be heard yet not see persons outside?
That would be a yes.
-
Please do not evade my hypothetical. I have constructed in precisely so line of sight issues are excluded.
-
Please do not evade my hypothetical. I have constructed in precisely so line of sight issues are excluded.
Can the yelling be heard by someone with a normal range of hearing located in a public place?
-
In the hypothetical the other side of the fence is open space, containing no places where a human can hide. Any normal person would think he is alone.
-
In the hypothetical the other side of the fence is open space, containing no places where a human can hide. Any normal person would think he is alone.
I don't think that is relevant. Anything that exits the home into public space isn't considered a search for 4th Amd. purposes.
-
Hester v. US, 265 U.S. 57 (1924)-the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their 'persons, houses, papers and effects,' is not extended to the open fields.
-
https://ssd.eff.org/your-computer/govt/privacy
Public places. It may sound obvious, but you have little to no privacy when you are in public. When you are in a public place — whether walking down the sidewalk, shopping in a store, sitting in a restaurant or in the park — your actions, movements, and conversations are knowingly exposed to the public. That means the police can follow you around in public and observe your activities, see what you are carrying or to whom you are talking, sit next to you or behind you and listen to your conversations — all without a warrant. You cannot necessarily expect Fourth Amendment protection when you’re in a public place, even if you think you are alone.
-
http://www.volokh.com/2010/02/09/the-misunderstood-reasonable-expectation-of-privacy-test/
The Misunderstood “Reasonable Expectation of Privacy” Test
Orin Kerr • February 9, 2010 8:54 pm
Discussions about the Fourth Amendment sometimes include arguments that look like this:
The Fourth Amendment protects reasonable expectations of privacy. I expect privacy in _________, and I’m pretty reasonable, so I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in ________ and the Fourth Amendment should therefore protect it.
This reasoning is really common, but it’s also based on a misunderstanding. It is based on the erroneous belief that the test for whether government conduct violates a “legitimate” or “reasonable” expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment is whether a reasonable person would expect privacy in what the government learned. I can certainly understand why a lot of people think that way. After all, the test is “reasonable expectation of privacy,” which sure sounds like it should be based on whether a reasonable person would expect privacy. But it turns out that this isn’t how the Fourth Amendment works, and I wanted to explain why.
The key idea is that the phrase “reasonable expectation of privacy” is a constitutional term of art, much like other constitutional terms of art like “due process,” “free speech,” “strict scrutiny,” or “fundamental rights.” You normally can’t answer if something violates “due process” just by asking if there was a “process” that seemed “due,” much like you can’t answer if a regulation satisfies “strict scrutiny” by scrutinizing the regulation while being “strict.” In all of these cases, the phrase captures a complicated body of caselaw; You can’t just repeat the name for the test and think that the name accurately captures the doctrine. Rather, you need to recognize the test as a term of art that reflects a large body of caselaw, and you need to get the answer from the caselaw.
In the case of the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test, the Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to provide a single test for what makes an expectation of privacy “reasonable.” Instead, it has used different approaches in different settings. In some settings, an expectation of privacy becomes reasonable when it is a good thing as a policy matter for the Fourth Amendment to protect it. In other settings, an expectation of privacy becomes reasonable when it is backed by positive law outside the Fourth Amendment. In other settings, an expectation of privacy becomes reasonable when it shields the government from particularly private facts. Finally, in some settings, an expectation of privacy is reasonable when common social norms make exposure jarring or unlikely. I have called these four approaches the Four Models of Fourth Amendment Protection; they are four different ways of interpreting what makes an expectation of privacy reasonable, and they each apply in various degrees in different factual settings.
It sounds complicated, I realize, and it is. But I think there are good practical reasons why the Supreme Court has refused to provide a single test for what makes an expectation of privacy reasonable; no one test consistently and accurately distinguishes government investigative steps that need Fourth Amendment regulation from those that don’t. (See the Four Models paper linked to above starting at page 25 for the detailed answer of why.) Whatever the reason, the key point is that a “reasonable expectation of privacy” is not just an empirical question into whether a reasonable person would expect privacy. You can’t just mull over the words “reasonable expectation of privacy” and derive an answer from those words any more than you can mull over words like “due process” and derive an answer from for what the due process clause forbids.
-
In determining whether the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement applies, the threshold issue is whether a particular governmental activity is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The applicability of the Fourth Amendment depends on "whether the person invoking its protection can claim a `justifiable,' a `reasonable,' or a `legitimate expectation of privacy' that has been invaded by governmental action." Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979).
When a police officer overhears a conversation without the aid of any listening device, from a vantage point at which he is legally present, the officer's use of his sense of hearing does not constitute a Fourth Amendment search. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a conversation that can be heard without the assistance of an artificial device. People v. Hart, 787 P.2d 186, 188 (Colo. App. 1989) (conversation overheard through adjoining door between motel rooms); United States v. Hessling, 845 F.2d 617 (6th Cir. 1988). See United States v. Agapito, 620 F.2d 324 (2d Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 834, 101 S.Ct. 107, 66 L.Ed.2d 40 (1980).
Eavesdropping statutes require use of subjective and objective tests (privacy expectation and the reasonableness thereof) to determine whether a person's conversation qualifies as protected oral communications. People v. Hart, 787 P.2d 186 (Colo. App. 1989).
-
Those are some helpful posts GM, thank you.
Following up on your last one, is not the drone of my hypothetical a "listening device"?
-
Those are some helpful posts GM, thank you.
Following up on your last one, is not the drone of my hypothetical a "listening device"?
Possibly, depending on what caselaw develops. I'd say that a drone using audio input that replicates normal human hearing wouldn't fall under that while a drone equipped with microphones that can penetrate far beyond normal human range would, using a standard set in KYLLO v. UNITED STATES.
-
What do you think of a world wherein everything outside one's front door is recorded?
-
Those are some helpful posts GM, thank you.
Following up on your last one, is not the drone of my hypothetical a "listening device"?
Possibly, depending on what caselaw develops. I'd say that a drone using audio input that replicates normal human hearing wouldn't fall under that while a drone equipped with microphones that can penetrate far beyond normal human range would, using a standard set in KYLLO v. UNITED STATES.
"...depending on what caselaw develops." I thought you said that there was established case law. There is real discussion about the applicability of Kyllo because of the idea that in 2001, the technology in question wasn't common. This seemed to be an issue with Scalia in the opinion of the court. I posted a CRS report on this question a while back.
-
There is established caselaw that cover most things, as the last several posts from me demonstrated.
-
What do you think of a world wherein everything outside one's front door is recorded?
By human brains or hard drives? Or did you have another storage media in mind?
-
There is established caselaw that cover most things, as the last several posts from me demonstrated.
But not drone surveillance.
-
There is established caselaw that cover most things, as the last several posts from me demonstrated.
But not drone surveillance.
Drones are aircraft. If you'll scroll back, you'll see several cases involving aircraft surveillance.
-
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnvillasenor/2012/09/20/will-drones-outflank-the-fourth-amendment/
Will "Drones" Outflank the Fourth Amendment?
In a word, no. The Fourth Amendment, which provides the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” has been a cornerstone of privacy from government intrusion since 1791. It has served us well across more than two centuries of technology advances, and there is no reason to expect that it will suddenly lose its protective power when domestic use of unmanned aircraft becomes common.
In February 2012, President Obama signed an FAA bill into law that provides for the integration of “drones,” or more properly, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), into the nation’s airspace. This has generated legitimate concerns that UAVs could be used by the government in ways that infringe privacy rights, particularly in light of three 1980s-era Supreme Court decisions that found no Fourth Amendment violation in warrantless observations from manned government aircraft.
In 1986, the Court ruled in California v. Ciraolo that police officers who identified marijuana plants in a suspect’s backyard from a plane at an altitude of 1000 feet did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Three years later in Florida v. Riley, a majority of justices reached the same conclusion regarding observations of marijuana plants in a greenhouse from a helicopter at 400 feet. And in Dow Chemical Co. v. United States, a 1986 decision addressing government use of a commercial mapping camera to take aerial photographs of an industrial facility (as opposed to the “curtilage” of home considered in Ciraolo and Riley), the Court ruled in favor of the government.
These decisions do indeed indicate that government investigators will sometimes be able to use UAVs without a warrant. However, that does not mean that all government UAV observations, no matter how invasive, will be constitutional. In fact, a careful review of the opinions in these and other relevant Supreme Court cases suggests that the Fourth Amendment may provide significantly more protection than is often assumed.
In Ciraolo, for example, the Court held that the “Fourth Amendment simply does not require the police traveling in the public airways at this altitude [1000 feet] to obtain a warrant in order to observe what is visible to the naked eye.” A UAV equipped with an imaging system capturing much more detail than could the human eye would fall outside the scope of this holding. So, too, would one operating outside of public navigable airspace, though defining exactly where that lies for UAVs can be complex.
In Riley, which also involved naked eye observations, Justice White and the three other justices who joined his opinion found no Fourth Amendment violation in part because “no intimate details connected with the use of the home or curtilage were observed.” Justice O’Connor’s Riley concurrence emphasized that reasonable expectations of privacy, and not “compliance with FAA regulations alone,” should determine the constitutionality of aerial observations.
The Dow Chemical Court concluded that “the open areas of an industrial plant complex are not analogous to the ‘curtilage’ of a dwelling for purposes of aerial surveillance.” Yet, even under that much lower privacy standard, the Court implied the existence of some constitutional bounds, noting that “the photographs here are not so revealing of intimate details as to raise constitutional concerns.”
Several more recent Supreme Court decisions in non-aviation cases are also relevant to UAV privacy. In 2001, the Court ruled against the government in a case involving use of a ground-based thermal imager to detect an indoor marijuana growing operation by measuring the temperature of the roof and outside wall of a house. Writing for the Court in Kyllo v. United States, Justice Scalia expressed concern that allowing the government to freely collect any information “emanating from a house” would put people “at the mercy of advancing technology – including imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home.” The rule adopted by the Kyllo Court provides that when “the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a ‘search’ and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.”
As has often been noted (including in Justice Stevens’ dissent in Kyllo), the “not in general public use” restriction can weaken with time as a formerly rare technology becomes common. However, Kyllo stops well short of endorsing the constitutionality of using a commonly available technology to observe a home. As Justice Scalia wrote in response to the dissent on this specific point, the thermal imaging in Kyllo was not “routine.” The Kyllo Court did not need to address the question of observations using routine technology, and specifically declined to do so.
Under a balanced reading of Kyllo, government use of a UAV to reveal “details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion” would be unconstitutional today. Ten years from now, when UAVs will be common, that still may be the case – but that conclusion will need to come from a ruling other than Kyllo.
Most recently, the Supreme Court found against the government in United States v. Jones [PDF], a January 2012 decision that addressed the constitutionality of affixing a GPS tracking device to a vehicle without a valid warrant. While the basis for the decision was narrow – the Court found a Fourth Amendment violation in the physical trespass that occurred during the placement of the GPS device on the vehicle – the aspects of the Jones opinions addressing extended surveillance are directly relevant to long-endurance UAVs.
The opinion of the Court, delivered by Justice Scalia, stated that extended electronic surveillance “without an accompanying trespass” may be unconstitutional, but noted that the “present case does not require us to answer that question.” In a concurrence, Justice Alito wrote that “the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.” And in a separate concurrence, Justice Sotomayor noted the “existence of a reasonable societal expectation of privacy in the sum of one’s public movements.” Thus, the justices are on record recognizing the constitutionality question raised by new technologies enabling extended surveillance, though they deferred its resolution to another day.
In the aggregate, these rulings provide cause for optimism that, with respect to government UAV observations, the Fourth Amendment will be reasonably protective. Whether it will be sufficiently protective is a different question, and one well worth attention. But when engaging in that discussion, it is important not to lose sight of the substantial constitutional foundation we already have.
-
GM:
I've been too busy to respond with the level of focus that your helpful posts merit, but in the meantime here is something on the hypocrisy of Bloomberg and the NYPD. Yes there is plenty of claptrap in it, but the larger point about the hypocrisy seems fair to me.
Marc
====================
http://www.alternet.org/suddenly-nypd-doesnt-love-surveillance-anymore
-
GM:
I've been too busy to respond with the level of focus that your helpful posts merit, but in the meantime here is something on the hypocrisy of Bloomberg and the NYPD. Yes there is plenty of claptrap in it, but the larger point about the hypocrisy seems fair to me.
Marc
====================
http://www.alternet.org/suddenly-nypd-doesnt-love-surveillance-anymore
The Peelian principles describe the philosophy that Robert Peel developed to define an ethical police force. The principles traditionally ascribed to Peel state that:
■Every police officer should be issued an identification number, to assure accountability for his actions.
■Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime.
■Above all else, an effective authority figure knows trust and accountability are paramount. Hence, Peel's most often quoted principle that "The police are the public and the public are the police."
However, it has been suggested that Peel's list of principles was more likely authored by twentieth century policing scholars than by Peel himself; although Peel discussed the spirit of some of these principles in his speeches and other communications, researchers Lentz and Chaires found no proof that he ever actually compiled a formal list.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2043907
A Due Process Right to Record the Police
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
University of Tennessee College of Law
John A. Steakley
John A. Steakley, P.C.
April 22, 2012
Washington University Law Review, Vol. 89, No. 30, 2012, Forthcoming
University of Tennessee Legal Studies Research Paper No. 190
Abstract:
There has been considerable discussion of citizens' First Amendment right to record the police. This essay, however, argues that independent of any First Amendment right, there is also a due process right to record the actions of law enforcement, and that this right applies even when the interaction takes place in private, and not in public places. This question of a due process right to record the police has not yet produced the degree of attention and litigation that public recording has, but the growth of inexpensive recording equipment and its inclusion in smart phones ensures that such attention and litigation are sure to be forthcoming.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 9
Keywords: first amendment, due process, recording, video, photography, police, law enforcement, citizen
Accepted Paper Series
-
I found out about this by listening to the Kim Kommando radio show Sunday night. It's far superior to Google or Bing or Yahoo, since it does not record your searches or track you in any way so marketers can contact you:
https://duckduckgo.com/
-
Pasted from another forum which prefers to remain low-key with permission of the author:
**********WARNING: layman about to delve into the murky waters of the realm of law**********
First, the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill of Rights
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Probable cause being defined as:
Quote:
In General
A. Probable cause exists when the facts and circumstances within an officer’s knowledge, and of which she has reasonably trustworthy information, are sufficient in themselves to permit a person of reasonable caution to believe that:
1. Arrests
An offense has been committed, and the person to be arrested committed it.
2. Searches
The item to be searched for is present at a certain place at a certain time and is either:
A. The fruit of a crime;
B. The instrumentality of a crime;
C. Evidence of a crime; or
D. Contraband.
http://sparkcharts.sparknotes.com/le...e/section6.php
or [emphasis added]
Quote:
Generally speaking, probable cause is described from the point of view of a reasonable person. In other words, probable cause is an objective test and therefore, it can’t simply stem from a police officer’s hunch or suspicion that a crime has been committed. Specific facts and circumstances are required to make an adequate showing of probable cause that a crime has been committed or that evidence of a crime exists at the location that is to be searched.
http://www.4thamendment.net/probablecause.html
Blanket searches are prohibited:
Quote:
Blanket searches are unreasonable, however 'evenhanded' they may be, in the traditional criminal law enforcement context. See, e.g., Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91-2, 92 n.4 ('79) (invalidating a blanket patdown search of all patrons in a tavern, even though there was probable cause to search the bartender and the premises). The ill that the Fourth Amendment prevents is not merely the arbitrariness of police discretion to single out individuals for attention, but also the unwarranted domination and control of the citizenry through fear of baseless but 'evenhanded' general police searches.
http://www.lectlaw.com/def/f081.htm
The only potentially applicable exception I can find is for Exigent Circumstances [emphasis added]:
Quote:
There are also "exigent circumstances" exceptions to the warrant requirement. Exigent circumstances arise when the law enforcement officers have reasonable grounds to believe that there is an immediate need to protect their lives, the lives of others, their property, or that of others, the search is not motivated by an intent to arrest and seize evidence, and there is some reasonable basis, to associate an emergency with the area or place to be searched.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth...s_Constitution
or
Quote:
There is also an exception to the requirement of probable cause in certain emergency situations. If there is a threat to public safety or a risk that evidence will be lost or destroyed, police are not required to make a showing of probable cause in order to conduct a search and seizure.
http://www.4thamendment.net/probablecause.html
So, some questions that come to mind are:
1. If the police cordon off a 30-block area (or whatever it was) does the exigent circumstance of a dangerous suspect they believe to be on the loose in that area give them carte blanche authority to barge into and search each and every home in that large area they so choose whether or not they have any articulable suspicion the suspect is in a particular home?
2. If they lack that specific reason and remove residents from an arbitrary house are they actually placing those residents, previously holed up in their home in relative safety, at increased danger from the suspect believed to be in the area?
3. If they don't have the authority to search homes door-to-door, might they instead search the yards and/or curtilage of the homes in the area for evidence of the suspect, particularly signs of forced entry, which would then give them the probable cause for a search of the home in question? Wouldn't this be a more efficient method of searching the area anyway and in fact likely have most quickly led to the location of the suspect in this case?
4. If they announce their intention to search an arbitrary occupied home in the cordoned area without any particular suspicion and are met by armed residents who do not match the suspect description, affirm that the suspect is not in the home and refuse/resist entry by the police, will the police take the time out from their search to engage the residents by force, up to and including deadly force, in order to conduct that search, or back off and move along to the next house? Recall, this is all ostensibly justified in order to protect the public from danger.
Inquiring minds want to know....
-
Bringing this over from 'Constitutional Issues' by request.
Does the Right to Privacy apply to gun ownership?
If not, why not?
OK, but Griswold says [first, third, fourth, fifth and ninth]. With its specificity, my answer to "does" would still be no.
I very much appreciate Bigdog's answer, provided in the context of precedent and settled case law. I need to go back and re-read Griswold to better understand the meaning. A follow up question for BD, if I may ask: Should a right of privacy apply to gun ownership? (And if not, why not?)
This question is crucial in the gun control debate. The biggest point of contention remaining is whether or not the government at any level should be keeping a registry. The publishing of the gun owners and addresses in one area reportedly led to break-ins of those homes. Once a gun purchase is approved, the ownership of that gun is a fundamental right. Shouldn't there be a privacy right associated with that transaction and resulting ownership?
-----
It seems to me (mentioned previously) that a real 'right of privacy' is something we recognize quite selectively and step on quite freely when it doesn't fit with our other objectives.
A right of privacy was recognized by the Court in the Griswold decision to protect the choice of using birth control. Privacy applies to homosexual acts in Lawrence, but not to everything that happens in a bedroom. Privacy guarantees the right to slaughter your unborn young in Roe, up to a point, and less so after the decisions of Webster and Casey. Where else does privacy apply? Where else should it apply? Are tax returns private? Gun ownership? Census questionnaire information disclosed? Is a Colorado medical marijuana license list private - even if it is a violation of federal law? Why is there no right of privacy associated with the procurement of health care services?
Did the right of privacy originate in these Court decisions or did it pre-exist, on all private matters, as a fundamental right, and require a compelling state interest in order to limit or violate it?
---------------
Crafty: "Good point about privacy and the procurement of health care. Although obvious, I confess I had not made that connection."
The Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches did not make that obvious connection either.
The answer could have been that it was over-ridden by a 'compelling government interest' but that is of course nonsense. Strict scrutiny was not applied to Obamacare (narrowly tailored??), therefore your privacy was not recognized as a fundamental constitutional right. Instead they selectively ignored privacy on this one issue while relying on it completely to decide others.
-
Quick note: I see that my fingers were too fast or my eyes too slow. Privacy is is found in first, third, fourth, fifth and ninth. If I spell it out, maybe I'll get it right. Sheesh, and with apologies.
-
So, some questions that come to mind are:
1. If the police cordon off a 30-block area (or whatever it was) does the exigent circumstance of a dangerous suspect they believe to be on the loose in that area give them carte blanche authority to barge into and search each and every home in that large area they so choose whether or not they have any articulable suspicion the suspect is in a particular home?
I sure wouldn't think so. I doubt the courts would either, except in very extreme circumstances, like a potential nuclear terror incident.
2. If they lack that specific reason and remove residents from an arbitrary house are they actually placing those residents, previously holed up in their home in relative safety, at increased danger from the suspect believed to be in the area?
Possibly. Under normal circumstances, LE has no direct duty to protect individuals, UNLESS we deprive them of their freedom. I'd think that if you remove someone from their home under the color of your authority, and in doing so, place them into harm's way and they suffer harm as a result, there would be serious liability there.
3. If they don't have the authority to search homes door-to-door, might they instead search the yards and/or curtilage of the homes in the area for evidence of the suspect, particularly signs of forced entry, which would then give them the probable cause for a search of the home in question? Wouldn't this be a more efficient method of searching the area anyway and in fact likely have most quickly led to the location of the suspect in this case?
I'd think so.
4. If they announce their intention to search an arbitrary occupied home in the cordoned area without any particular suspicion and are met by armed residents who do not match the suspect description, affirm that the suspect is not in the home and refuse/resist entry by the police, will the police take the time out from their search to engage the residents by force, up to and including deadly force, in order to conduct that search, or back off and move along to the next house? Recall, this is all ostensibly justified in order to protect the public from danger.
How would they know these were not associates of the fugitive terrorists shielding them? If police show up to search your home, the wrong response is to do the above, anytime, though during the Boston Bombing manhunt it would be an especially poor choice. If police enter your home, and the do so illegally, the correct way to address it is through the courts and enjoy the large check.
Inquiring minds want to know....
-
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/artscience/2013/05/creepy-or-cool-portraits-derived-from-the-dna-in-hair-and-gum-found-in-public-places/
Very interesting.
-
My address has been randomly selected to receive the 28 page "American Community Survey", all of it a violation of my privacy and offensive to me. I have just received their third communication, including the following:
"You are required by law to respond to this survey."
We can discuss this in detail. What I need right now is legal advice! I can't imagine answering this.
What article of the constitution authorized this? The value of my house? Property insurance? How many times has this person been married? College degrees? Ancestry?! The federal government needs to know that to determine whether to build a road or hospital? The federal government builds roads and hospitals near me?? Absences from work, how many minutes it takes to get to work? Do I have to disclose any stops I make? How many ride in my car? Income - Don't you already have that? Health insurance with choices a-h! Who saw THAT coming?
WHAT TIME DO YOU USUALLY LEAVE HOME?
My name, address, phone number, birth date?
When was the last time you guys had a breach of private information, campaign 2012?? ??
-
From whom is this communication?
-
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/about_the_survey/american_community_survey/
-
FWIW I don't answer the questions I don't want to answer.
The questions about race I answer by marking "other" and filling in the space with "human"
About 20 years ago I had some bureau flunky knock on my door to chastise me for not answering all the questions. I told her the ones I did not answer were none of the governments business and closed the door in her face. That was the end of it.
-
Good answer Guro.. :-)
-
**Remember, Obama forbids local level law enforcement from inquiring if someone is here illegally.**
http://www.gao.gov/decisions/other/289852.htm
Legal Authority for American Community Survey, B-289852, April 4, 2002
B-289852
April 4, 2002
The Honorable Bob Barr
Vice Chairman
Committee on Government Reform
House of Representatives
Subject: Legal Authority for American Community Survey
Dear Mr. Vice Chairman:
This responds to your letter regarding the legal authority of the U.S. Census Bureau (Bureau) to conduct the American Community Survey (ACS), a monthly survey of a sample of households that, beginning in 2003, is intended to replace the long form questionnaire for the decennial census in 2010. You asked us to provide (1) the legal authority under which the Bureau is conducting the ACS, including any legislative history concerning the development and implementation of ACS, (2) the Bureau's legal authority to require recipients to respond to the ACS, and (3) information on any other federal government questionnaires or surveys that require similar specific, detailed personal information be provided to the government.
In order to respond to your questions, we examined various legislative materials such as public laws, committee reports and hearings, and the Congressional Record for references to the ACS, requested and received comments from the Department of Commerce (Commerce), and met informally with Commerce and Bureau officials to discuss these issues. We also searched an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) database for surveys that require specific detailed personal information. As discussed in detail below, we find that the Bureau has the authority under 13 U.S.C. §§ 141 and 193 to conduct the ACS. Although there is little legislative action tracking this Bureau initiative, the Bureau clearly has authority to require responses from the public to this survey. See 13 U.S.C. § 221. The Bureau must still receive clearance for the ACS through the Paperwork Reduction Act process. Finally, we found no other government surveys that respondents are required to respond to that ask specific, detailed personal information similar to that required by the ACS.
BACKGROUND
According to Commerce, the ACS, which is designed to replace the long form portion for future decennial censuses, tracks the questions asked in the long form questionnaire from the 2000 Census. The long form questionnaire asked a sample of persons and households for information on population topics, such as ancestry, veteran status, disability, labor force status, and income, and housing topics, such as value of home or rent paid, size and age of structure, plumbing and kitchen facilities, and expenses for utilities, mortgage, and taxes.
The Bureau began conducting supplementary surveys of selected counties under its authority at 13 U.S.C. § 182 in 1996 using the ACS methodology to test the operational feasibility of collecting long form type data in a different methodology from that of the decennial census. Beginning in 2003, the Bureau plans to expand the ACS nationwide in a yearly sample of three million households (250,000 each month) as part of its decennial census in order to move from a once-every-ten years activity to continuous data collection and data dissemination. By starting in 2003, data will be available for areas and population groups of 65,000 or more beginning in 2004 and for small areas and population groups of less than 20,000 people beginning in 2008.[1] According to Bureau officials, this will provide information on a timelier basis than is now currently available. For example, the most current long form information available from the Bureau is from the 1990 Census, since the 2000 Census data will not be available until this summer.
According to Commerce, the ACS information will provide more current data to a number of federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the Food and Nutrition Service of the Department of Agriculture.
DISCUSSION
Article I of the United States Constitution requires an enumeration of the population every ten years "in such Manner as they [Congress] shall by Law direct." U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl. 3. To implement this Constitutional requirement, Congress enacted 13 U.S.C. § 141, which requires "a decennial census of population as of the first day of April of such year . . . in such form and content as he [the Secretary of Commerce] may determine . . . . In connection with any such census, the Secretary is authorized to obtain such other census information as necessary." Section 141 also authorizes the decennial census to include the use of sampling procedures and special surveys.[2] The uses of census data have grown significantly beyond congressional apportionment of representatives in Congress into many other areas such as managing federal agencies, allocating federal aid and assistance, assisting local governments, and helping businesses.[3] The courts have generally viewed the authority of Commerce and the Bureau to gather census information broadly.[4] In a recent court decision, Morales v. Evans,[5] the court held that the questions and the long form from the 2000 census are constitutional.
In Morales, the court first reviewed both the short form and the long form questions from the 2000 Census and traced the origin of each question from prior censuses. The court noted the authority of the Bureau to collect more than headcount information, and then specifically addressed whether such collection violated the plaintiffs rights under the Fifth Amendment (due process), First Amendment (protection against compelled speech), and Fourth Amendment (unreasonable and illegal search). In each instance the court found the collection of information related to governmental purposes and there was no basis for holding such collection unconstitutional.
While Census clearly has authority to conduct the ACS, we found no public laws, committee reports, or other congressional actions in which Congress has required the Bureau to develop and implement the ACS. Two oversight hearings were held in 2000 and 2001 concerning the ACS,[6] and Congress has provided funding over the past several years for this program under the caption of "continuous measurement."[7] Commerce states that testing of the ACS has been part of the President's budget since 1996 and a pilot program has been funded since that time. Commerce also points out that it has regularly kept Congress informed of the development and intended implementation of the ACS in the annual budget justification that accompanies the President's budget. It is clear that Census was not reacting to congressional direction in developing the ACS but acting on its own initiative to address the costs associated with the collection of data in the decennial census and the timeliness of that data.
On the basis of the statutory authority cited above and the discretion recognized by the courts, we conclude that Commerce and the Bureau have the legal authority to conduct the ACS under 13 U.S.C. §§ 141 and 193. This finding does not address the question of whether the data should be collected, but only whether there is sufficient legal authority to conduct this annual survey.[8]
With regard to the question of whether the Bureau may require recipients to respond to the ACS, Bureau officials stated that the ACS is conducted under sections 141 and 193, cited above, and that because responses to Census Bureau censuses and surveys are required under 13 U.S.C. § 221, responses to the ACS are mandatory. Section 221 subjects recipients of a survey to monetary penalties for failure to answer questions on any survey conducted by the Bureau under certain authorities found in Chapter 5 of Title 13 of the United States Code. These authorities include censuses of manufacturers and other businesses under section 131, the decennial census of population under section 141, and interim current data for collection of population data between each census under section 181. Section 225 permits application of penal provisions in certain cases. For example, the provision for imprisonment does not apply to the interim current data surveys under section 181, although it does apply to the decennial census. 13 U.S.C. § 225(b). We note that the courts have held that there is a sufficient governmental interest to require the collection of census data and to assess penalties for the failure to comply.[9] We conclude therefore that the Bureau may require responses to the ACS survey.
With regard to providing statutory references for each question on the survey which is "required by federal law to manage or evaluate government programs," Commerce noted that each federal agency submits to the Interagency Committee for the ACS, led by OMB, its legal justifications for agency-specific topics and questions, and the questionnaire content is reviewed by the Interagency Committee. Commerce has provided an extensive table of statutory authorities to justify each question, but the response from Commerce notes that additional information may be added or corrected by the agencies as Commerce prepares its submission of the ACS questionnaire under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) clearance process.[10] Since this process for development of the ACS questionnaire is still underway, we cannot state as a matter of law whether the requisite statutory authority supports each question. However, Commerce and the Bureau will be required under the provisions of 44 U.S.C. §§ 3506 and 3507 to demonstrate that this collection of information is necessary, is not duplicative, and is understandable to those who are to respond.
Finally, to determine what other federal government surveys require specific, detailed personal information, we used information provided by federal agencies on Form 83-I, the Paperwork Reduction Act submission to OMB.[11] Agencies requesting clearance to collect information are required to report on this form the various characteristics of the collection including the following: who the collection affects-e.g., individuals or households, businesses, or the federal government; whether responses to the collection are voluntary, required to obtain or retain benefits, or mandatory; and the purpose of the collection--e.g., program evaluation, general purpose statistics, regulatory, or compliance.
Using information provided by OMB, we found no other government surveys that respondents are required to fill out that request specific, detailed personal information similar to that required by the ACS. The only information collections that met the conditions of being required or mandatory and affecting individuals or households for statistical or research purposes were those related to the 2000 decennial censuses, including the ACS.
CONCLUSION
For the reasons set forth above, the Bureau has authority under 13 U.S.C. §§ 141 and 193 to conduct the American Community Survey. The Bureau also has authority to require responses from the public to this survey.
We trust that this responds to your request. Should you have any questions, please contact Ms. Susan A. Poling at (202) 512-2667. We are sending an identical letter to The Honorable Dan Burton Chairman, Committee on Government Reform.
Sincerely yours,
Anthony H. Gamboa
General Counsel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1]
"What is the American Community Survey?", www.census.gov/acs, visited on March 18, 2002.
[2] The authority of Commerce and the Bureau to gather census information has been viewed broadly by the courts except in one particular area--how data is gathered for purposes of the enumeration for the apportionment of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. See Department of Commerce v. United States House of Representatives, 525 U.S. 316 (1999), which held that sampling may not be used in the enumeration for apportionment purposes.
[3] See Decennial Census, Overview of Historical Census Issues, GAO/GGD-98-103 (1998); Douglas A. Kysar, Kids & Cul-De-Sacs: Census 2000 and the Reproduction of Consumer Culture, 87 Cornell L. Rev. 853, March 2002 (book review).
[4] Wisconsin v. City of New York, 517 U.S. 1, 17 (1996).
[5]116 F. Supp. 2d 801 (S.D. Tex. 2000), aff'd 275 F.3d 45 (5th Cir. 2001), cert. denied, 122 S. Ct. 1079 (Mem) (2002).
[6] The American Community Survey--A Replacement for the Census Long Form? : Hearing before the Subcomm. on the Census of the House Committee on Government Reform, 106th Cong. (2000); The Census Bureau's Proposed American Community Survey: Hearing before the Subcomm. on the Census of the House Committee on Government Reform, 107th Cong. (2001).
[7] See, e.g., H. Rep. No. 105-207, at 66-67 (1997). See also Fiscal Year 2003 Budget Appendix, pp. 213-214 (2002).
[8] 13 U.S.C. § 141(f) directs Commerce to report to Congress three years in advance of the decennial census on the subjects to be covered and two years in advance on the questions to be asked in the decennial census. Commerce and Bureau officials indicated to us that they intend to initiate the ACS in October 2002 if funding is available, even though they will not have time to provide the information contemplated by subsection 141(f).
[9] See Morales, discussed above; United States v. Rickenbacker, 309 F.2d 462 (2nd Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 371 U.S. 962 (1963); United States v. Little, 317 F. Supp. 1308 (D.Del. 1970).
[10] See the request for comments on the proposed collection of information under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, Public Law 104-13, 67 Fed. Reg. 2186, Jan. 16, 2002.
[11] The key requirements under the Paperwork Reduction Act are set forth in Appendix II of Information Resources Management: Comprehensive Strategic Plan Needed to Address Mounting Challenges, GAO-02-292, February 2002.
-
http://www.examiner.com/article/american-community-survey-101-and-can-you-go-to-jail-for-ignoring-it
American Community Survey 101 and can you go to jail for ignoring it?
American Community Survey
April 2, 2011
By: D. Christian Moore
There has been a significant uptick in chatter on the internet and talk radio related to the “American Community Survey” (ACS). Much of this talk has centered on the “invasiveness” of the questions and the reported penalties for non compliance. There have also been many local news stories regarding complaints about the tactics used by those compiling survey data. As one might expect, some of the information which is generally available is good, some is incomplete, some is conjecture and some is just plain wrong or misleading.
The ACS is a survey conducted annually by the Department of Commerce under the auspices of the Census Bureau. At the Census Bureau’s website they have an ACS page with information related to how the data is used, the methodology behind the data collection and how participants are chosen each year. The Constitution authorizes a census to be taken every ten years, but the ACS was developed to collect annual data and capture changing trends during the intervening years between census data collections. The survey asks for names, ages, religious and ethnic categorizations of people living in the household. It also asks for employment and financial information of everyone in the house and the names and addresses of family members and employers. There are many other questions but I think the point about the detailed nature of the survey has been made. According to the Census Bureau, the data is used by government agencies and private businesses to determine infrastructure needs, resource allocation and population trends. A quick search through the Census Bureau’s ACS webpage revealed no information related to penalties and fines for refusing to complete the survey.
Opponents of the survey have complained the information is extremely invasive. To address privacy concerns the Census Bureau makes a point to demonstrating the steps they take to protect the data collected from unauthorized use or disclosure. To opponents however, it is not as much the fear of identity theft which motivates them but a general level of discomfort with providing so much personal information to the government, or anyone for that matter. This is a legitimate concern. Many opponents of the detailed statistical gathering state that according to the Constitution, the only information you are required to provide to the government is the number of people living at your address. Many also point to 4th Amendment protections against warrantless searches.
The Census Bureau actually addresses this on their website with a page discussing the legal precedents which have upheld their authority to collect more detailed information as part of the decennial census. That being said, the 2010 census form sparked controversy by asking for information beyond simply the number of people who live at a given address. Still left unclear is the constitutional authority to conduct ACS or any annual data collection separate from the decennial census. Given this controversy, it is not surprising that the ACS continues to elicit an almost visceral reaction from privacy advocates and citizens concerned about the size, scope and power of their government.
Much of the information available on the internet “reports” that the survey comes with a reminder that under Title 13 United States Code, failure to comply with the ACS, or providing false responses, will result in fines of $5,000 and even as high as $10,000. Though the Census Bureau does not list fines and penalties related non-compliance on the ACS webpage. Enough reputable news sources do report the existence of such penalties, along with potential incarceration for refusing to pay the fine’s that I think it is safe to say that the fines could technically be assessed. However, I have not been able to locate anyone who was actually fined for refusing. I suspect the Census Bureau includes the information to encourage survey participation.
The internet is also awash with stories of overzealous Census Bureau employees harassing citizens with late night door knocks and threatening phone calls. Some are on standard news sites and others are on sites with an agenda towards limited government but there are enough to suggest that some data collectors are stepping over the line. A common thread seems to be that when citizens push back, contact a reporter or complain to their congressional representative, the Census Bureau backs down. I should also point out that unless the person at your door is escorted by an actual law enforcement representative and a court order, you the citizen are under no legal obligation to speak to them.
-
Thanks for the replies. Crafty, yours might have just been for all the extra questions on the regular Census? On that, they do have the constitutional authority to know just the basics (that you answered), which would be how many people live there and I suppose enough extra information to verify accuracy and know they aren't double counting from you somewhere else. This survey is 28 pages.
What I think I have learned is that the penalty is 'up to $5000' (confirmed in GM post) and no one has ever been fined or jailed for not answering the American Community Survey because they don't want it tested in Court. They will however keep coming back to harass, not take no for an answer for up to about 7 attempts.
I answered my 10 year Census the way Crafty suggested, race=other, etc. My plan for this is to tell them I'll take the fine and the jail time, be the test case, and try to make it all back by writing a book.
I also read that the House has voted to end this, and Rand Paul has introduced a measure in the Senate.
Repeal would be great, arguing, refusing, closing the door is okay, but I still would like to know what happened to my right of privacy.
From the website on Bigdog's post:
"To protect your privacy, the American Community Survey NEVER asks for: your Social Security number, your personal information via email, money or donations, credit card information"
But that doesn't answer my concern. Even without my name, and they already have that, my address ties this all to me and it sits in their database. Similar databases of banks, credit card companies, Stratfor, the State Dept cables, etc are cracked every day. Has anyone at Census ever heard of Wiki-leaks? Even if there is zero risk of data lost or zero impact on me if there was a breach, aren't I entitled to as much privacy as a woman killing her fetus: 'No Ma'am, you can't have the procedure unless you tell us your ancestry, what time you leave your house, how many travel in your car, how many times you've been married, first mortgage, second mortgage, value of your house. property insurance, health insurance.' For how long would the big government types put up with that?
I've lived here 27 years and what I paid is already a public record on the internet for all to see. I haven't had it appraised and have never tried to sell it. The house didn't change. Why don't they tell me what the value of the dollar I bought it with is?
The ACS started in 2005 under a Republican President, House and Senate. It may not be a Supreme Court case, but we aren't living in a country that is headed back toward original intent.
Next time they ask for my health insurance info, there will be a real fine for not answering!
-------
My brother has a concealed carry permit, and not necessarily a gun. He called 911 during a neighborhood disturbance. They needed to know where HE kept his gun before they came out to help. How did they know that? They marked his information from one agency onto other records. I'm not much of a conspiracy nut, but this is information we give them just by complying with all these laws.
-
The IRS admits to ‘targeting’ conservative groups, but were they also ‘leaking’?
9:42 AM 05/13/2013
Matt K. Lewis
A little over a year ago, I reported that, ”It is likely that someone at the Internal Revenue Service illegally leaked confidential donor information showing a contribution from Mitt Romney’s political action committee to the National Organization for Marriage, says the group.”
Now — on the heels of news the IRS’s apology for having targeted conservative groups — NOM is renewing their demand that the Internal Revenue Service reveal the identity of the people responsible.
“There is little question that one or more employees at the IRS stole our confidential tax return and leaked it to our political enemies, in violation of federal law,” said NOM’s president Brian Brow, in a prepared statement. “The only questions are who did it, and whether there was any knowledge or coordination between people in the White House, the Obama reelection campaign and the Human Rights Campaign. We and the American people deserve answers.”
Recent reports indicate the IRS may have begun targeting conservative groups as early as 2010.
In a 2012 speech, Sen. Mitch McConnell noted, “The head of one national advocacy group has released documents which show that his group’s confidential IRS information found its way into the hands of a staunch critic on the Left who also happens to be a co-chairman of President Obama’s re-election committee. The only way this information could have been made public is if someone leaked it from inside the IRS.”
And so, the next question may be this: If the IRS was targeting conservative groups — as they now admit to doing — were they also leaking information?
UPDATE: In December of 2012, ProPublica wrote that they had obtained the application for recognition of tax-exempt status for Crossroads GPS, filed in September of 2010.
As the ProPublica story noted:
“‘As far as we know, the Crossroads application is still pending, in which case it seems that either you obtained whatever document you have illegally, or that it has been approved,’ Jonathan Collegio, the group’s spokesman, said in an email.
“The IRS sent Crossroads’ application to ProPublica in response to a public-records request. The document sent to ProPublica didn’t include an official IRS recognition letter, which is typically attached to applications of nonprofits that have been recognized. The IRS is only required to give out applications of groups recognized as tax-exempt.
“In an email Thursday, an IRS spokeswoman said the agency had no record of an approved application for Crossroads GPS, meaning that the group’s application was still in limbo.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/the-irs-admits-to-targeting-conservative-groups-but-were-they-also-leaking/
-
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/05/13/a-few-of-the-crazy-things-the-irs-asked-conservative-groups-to-divulge/
A Few of the Crazy Things the IRS Asked Conservative Groups to Divulge Add Up to a Pattern and Purpose
by
Bryan Preston
Mary Katherine Ham rounds up 10 of the crazy things that the IRS sought from conservative and Tea Party groups during its abusive phase. I’ll focus on a few of those.
1. The IRS wanted every bit of information that these organizations had on their members.
(http://cdn.pjmedia.com/tatler/files/2013/05/IRS2-e1368227720157.png)
Much of that information would allow the IRS to identify individual members of the targeted groups. Not just staff and donors, but members.
2. The IRS wanted information on the groups’ past and present employees and their relationships, with a special focus on familial relationships.
(http://cdn.pjmedia.com/tatler/files/2013/05/IRS3-e1368227778781.png)
3. Just in case Point 2 wasn’t clear enough, yes, family members must be included.
(http://cdn.pjmedia.com/tatler/files/2013/05/IRS4-e1368227821959.png)
4. Everything you turn over to the IRS will go public.
(http://cdn.pjmedia.com/tatler/files/2013/05/IRS6-e1368228161188.png)
The information that the IRS sought went well beyond what it could reasonably have been seeking in the name of determining whether the groups qualified for the tax exemption. It was seeking enough information to build out a full network of every one of the conservative groups and be able to database them and cross-link them with each other. That the information would have been public is a tell of one place it would have ended up: In the computers of the data-driven Obama campaign and its allies. Anyone else seeking it would probably have had a tougher time getting their hands on it, but the Obama campaign, the Media Matters crew, any Democrat opposition researcher — they would have gotten it.
Based on the Obama campaign’s love of all things data and its behavior toward Romney donors, it’s pretty clear that gathering the information through the IRS was not the end game, it was a stop on the way to an end: Public exposure, humiliation and attack against the individuals that the IRS had scooped up on these forms — donors, staff, members, and their families. Secondarily, anyone thinking about donating to or working with any of the targeted groups would have to think twice about the consequences that might follow their exercise of their free speech rights. There are a lot of people out there with messy divorces, bankruptcies and other skeletons in their closets. Just ask Jack Ryan how sensitive Obama and company are with unflattering private information.
It’s clear from the questions above that while the IRS may not have had an enemies list when its intrusive questioning regime began in 2010, it was building one, and a very large and sophisticate one at that.
-
That fleshes things out quite a bit GM.
Wonder why some of us are suspicious about Big Brother , , ,
http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/13/most-transparent-administration-in-histo
-
http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2013/05/13/meet-the-irs-team-in-charge-of-exempt-organization-reviews/?singlepage=true
Meet the IRS Team in Charge of Exempt Organization Reviews
May 13th, 2013 - 3:00 pm
Their work is in the news, so let’s meet the leadership team at the Internal Revenue Service that was in charge of reviewing those Tea Party applications for 501 (c) status.
Lois Lerner is the director of Exempt Organizations. All of the mischief which occurred at the IRS took place under her supervision.
Prior to joining the IRS, Lerner was a bureaucrat at the Federal Election Commission. Beginning in 1981, she served as an assistant general counsel, and was appointed in 1986 to head the Enforcement Division. Prior to joining the FEC, she was a staff attorney in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. She is a graduate of Northeastern University in Boston and received her Juris Doctor from Western New England College of Law in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Nan Downing is the director of Examinations. She helped implement a “Fast Track Settlement” process for 501(c) applicants.
It must not apply to any conservative or Tea Party groups because they have been waiting for determinations for years after multiple intrusive questions about volunteers and donors.
David Fish is the acting director of Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements at the IRS.
Fish helped implement electronic applications for exempt status. The electronic applications apparently didn’t speed up the process for Tea Party groups who have been waiting years for determinations.
Melany Partner is the IRS director of Customer Education and Outreach for Exempt Organizations.
Her job is (presumably) to help applicants like the many dozens of Tea Party groups understand and navigate the IRS 501(c) application process. Obviously there’s some room for improvement, to say the least.
Also read: White House Counsel Knew in April of IRS’s Targeting of Conservatives
-
Once again GM brings his strong google fu skills to finding for us particularly pertinent information.
-
The Obama administration has been lying about the scope of the IRS’s harassment of conservative-leaning non-profits. The Washington Post has obtained documents that show the anti-conservative effort was directed from Washington, D.C., and was not a rogue operation out of the agency’s Cincinnati office, as the administration has claimed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-denounces-reported-irs-targeting-of-conservative-groups/2013/05/13/a0185644-bbdf-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/05/14/irs-released-confidential-info-on-conservative-groups-to-propublica/
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/05/irs-scandal-about-to-blow-wide-open.php
Does anyone know when Eric Holder gets out of jail from his Contempt of Congress citation? Maybe he can get to the bottom of this - like he did with Fast and Furious.
I wanted this administration to fall based on failed economic policies, but their arrogance and duplicity was bound to catch up with them too.
-
TARGETED - President Obama said Monday that if any Internal Revenue Service staff targeted groups based on their political leanings, they would be held "fully accountable" for their actions, in remarks that came as both Republican and Democratic lawmakers continued to express anger over the revelations.
• But President Obama also dismissed a reporter’s question about the IRS intimidating conservative groups during the election with a wave of his hand on Monday morning.
• Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
• The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee announced Monday that it will hold a hearing on the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for tax exempt status. The hearing will take place Friday morning.
• The Internal Revenue Service says acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller was first informed in May 2012 that tea party groups were inappropriately targeted for scrutiny. A month later he wrote a member of Congress to explain the process of reviewing applications for tax-exempt status without mentioning the controversy.
• An attorney for a Tea Party group that believes the IRS targeted it for special scrutiny while applying for nonprofit status said an IRS analyst told him over a year ago that the agency had a “secret working group” devoted to investigating conservative organizations.
• Attorney Dan Backer, whose client TheTeaParty.net has been trying to obtain tax-exempt status since 2010, said an IRS analyst mentioned the alleged working group during a phone conversation about one of Backer’s other client organizations.
• While the Internal Revenue Service has apologized for targeting Tea Party groups, a number still have not received their tax-exempt status. Some have not even heard back from the IRS.
• The following, based on questionnaires made public by Tea Party groups, are examples of the requests made by the IRS as part of the application for tax-exempt status.
o Copies of current web pages, including blog posts and social networking site pages
o Copies of all newsletters, bulletins and flyers
o Names of donors and amounts they gave
o Names of those who received donations and amounts received
o Dates of community events including rallies
o Contents of speeches delivered at sponsored events
o Names of event organizers
o Copies of documents that rate political candidates
o Amount of money spent on publishing materials
o Membership agreement and rules that govern members
o Salary information
• Despite the administrations’ claim to find the truth, many believe the White House was not an innocent bystander. Austan Goolsbee, who was Obama's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, entered the fray at an August 27, 2010, press briefing where he let slip that he knew that Koch Industries had paid no income taxes.
• Koch Industries is a privately held company and therefore their tax returns and tax payments are not normally publicly available.
• The Obama administration then switched to a second line of defense: that Mr. Goolsbee simply misspoke, that he didn’t mean to say what he said, and that it was merely a coincidence that he had just happened to guess their tax information. But it was quite a lucky guess. The IRS’s Inspector General promised to look into whether Goolsbee had illegally gotten confidential tax information, but a report was never released.
• Democratic Montana Senator Max Baucus is leading an investigation into why the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative nonprofit groups for extra scrutiny despite the fact that Baucus once wrote a letter urging the IRS to do exactly that.
• According to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, IRS employees donated over two-and-a-half times more to Barack Obama than to Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
• The National Organization for Marriage is renewing their demand that the Internal Revenue Service reveal the identity of the people responsible illegally leaked confidential donor information showing a contribution from Mitt Romney’s political action committee to National Organization for Marriage.
• U.S. Representative Mike Turner(R-OH) introduced a bill Monday that would make it a crime -- punishable by jail time -- for an IRS agent to target groups based on their political beliefs.
• U.S. Senator Marco Rubio said Monday the head of the Internal Revenue Service should resign in the wake of reports that the agency has been targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
• MSNBC host Joe Scarborough tore into the federal government over the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups.
• In addition to calling the admitted actions “mind-boggling,” the personality highlighted the assertion that “this government is using the Internal Revenue Service to target people with whom they disagree.” Others, like co-host Willie Geist, jumped in say that the collective actions constitute ”tyranny.”
-
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/14/Obama-campaign-co-chair-attacked-Romney-conservative-group-in-2012-with-leaked-IRS-scandal-documents
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/15/exclusive-prominent-catholic-prof-claims-irs-audited-her-after-speaking-out-against-obama-and-demanded-to-know-who-was-paying-her/
-
http://michellemalkin.com/2013/05/29/confirmed-polk-county-fl-schools-conducted-iris-scans-on-students-without-permission/
-
http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2013/06/supreme-court-allows-police-to-take-dna-sample-without-warrant/
-
Here is a true event that happened to a gentleman who trained
here in Weare NH for just a short time with me. He couldnt find work
here as a martial arts teacher so he moved out to Florida and this here
is from what had just happened only a few days ago. Read how stupid
_/some/_ cops really are. And this is why you all should learn your rights.
Peter
Score one for liberty!
I want to start off by saying that I have a lot of respect for police
officers and the work that they do. This entry is not intended to put
down police officers in general but rather explain a bad experience that
I had with one the day before yesterday.
I just drove to Florida from New Hampshire. I pretty much drove straight
through, stopping only occasionally for small naps. I set out to cross
the border before I took a nap and I was wrecked. Once I crossed the
border, it was like a huge wave of relief passed over my body. I had
finally made it. Even though I still have five hours of driving left, I
felt that I have met a goal. Right over the border, there was a rest
stop. It said that it was guarded, so I figured it would be safe to stop
there and sleep for a few hours before I continued on. I passed an
agricultural check point that said all commercial vehicles needed to stop.
As I pulled into the rest stop, blue lights flash behind me. I pull over
immediately (as you are supposed to do) and the police officer on a loud
speaker instructs be to pull all the way in which I did. Once I pulled
in, I did as I have always done when pulled over, I got my license and
registration ready. I turned my dome light on. I rolled down my window,
and I had my hands at ten and two. Of course, he decides to go to the
passenger side. So I crawl across the van and roll that window down.
He asks me why I did not stop at the checkpoint. I explained to him that
the sign said commercial vehicles only. He told me that vans (like mine)
are considered commercial vehicles and that it is a $151 fine for
passing it. I apologized and told him that I was quite tired and will
keep that in mind in the future. He told me to wait there while he ran
my license.
He came back asked me to step out of the car, which I did and walked
with him to the back of the van. He had called for back up. There were
three more cruisers there as well as the armed guard from the rest stop.
This is how the conversation went …
Officer: Why are you so nervous?
Me: I am not nervous, just tired.
Officer: Your eyes are red and you are shaking.
Me: Well yeah, I am really tired. I was pulling over to get some sleep
and you startled me with your lights.
Officer: No, you pulled over to get away from me.
Me: Honestly, I had no idea you were there until you turned the lights
on. I just want to rest for a bit.
Officer: You couldn't even maintain a speed.
Me: What does that mean?
Officer: You were slowing down.
Me: That is what I do when I get off an exit. What did you clock me at?
Officer: About 25 on the ramp.
Me: (I look over and gesture to the sign that says RAMP 25 MPH other
police officers chuckle). You got me officer. What is the fine in
Florida for obeying the speed limit?
Officer: You know that you illegally passed the checkpoint and that is
punishable by a $151 fine?
Me: That is what you told me and I explained to you that I did not
realize that my van that I use for personal and family use was
considered commercial.
Officer: We are going to search your van. Is that ok?
Me: Not it is not.
Officer: What do you have to hide?
Me: Nothing, which is why you are wasting your time with me and should
be out looking for criminals or doing something productive.
Officer: Let me explain something to you. I don't need a warrant or your
permission to search your van. You broke the law by passing the checkpoint …
Me: (interrupting) What is the fine for that (shoot a look at the other
officers)
Officer: $151 (other officers chuckle – initial officer getting irritated).
Me: Well if you don't need permission or a warrant then apparently you
are going going to search it anyway. I want it on the record and
documented that I protest this search and offer no consent.
Officer: Here is what I am going to do. I am going to call a judge and
get a warrant.
Me: Why would you do that? You said you don't need one.
Officer: Just to cover my butt.
Me: Why do you need to cover your butt if you can legally search my van?
Officer: This is going to go one of two ways. The easy way or the hard
way. Either you can let us search your van or I am going to wake up a
judge at 11 at night and get a warrant. Do you want me to have to wake
up a judge?
Me: Yes …
Officer: Why?
Me: Because I have rights. Basically what you are telling me is that I
have two options, you are going to search my van or you are going to
search my van. Show me a warrant. I want a copy in my hand.
Officer: If I have to get a warrant, I am going to keep you here all
night while I go through your stuff.
Me: It's not like you would search it faster if I gave permission.
Officer: If I have to get a warrant, you are going to have to unload
your van.
Me: Nope, IF you get a warrant, then you can unload my van. I am not
doing it.
Officer: Why?
Me: Because there are no cameras in my van and no way to document what
goes on in there while I am unloading. I am not going to get shot or
tazed in the back because you claim that I moved to quickly or picked up
a weapon that ended up being a dildo or something.
Officer: You have a dildo?
Me: Get a warrant and you can find out … you don't have any latex
allergies do you?
Officer: Do you have anything in the van?
Me: Yes …
Officer: No, I mean do you have anything illegal in the van?
Me: Oh … no.
Officer: No knives or firearms.
Me: Yes, both.
Officer: You said you didn't have anything in the van.
Me: I said I didn't have anything illegal in the van and they are not
illegal. The firearms are dismantled. The slides and the frames are in
different boxes and locked and the ammo is separate.
Officer: What kind of guns?
Me: Non of your business.
Officer: I need to check if they are loaded.
Me: Not without a warrant.
Officer: Carrying a loaded firearm in a vehicle is against the law in
Florida.
Me: Not with a CCW which I have and will be happy to show you.
Officer: (noticing that my pocket was pulled out) What did you take out
of your pocket?
Me: My wallet.
Officer: Why would you take your wallet out of your pocket?
Me: To get to my license.
Officer: Why did you need that?
Me: To put it in your hand ...
Officer: This is your last chance before I call a judge.
Me: This is your last chance before I file harassment charges.
At this point he gets on his phone and I did what he should have been
doing the whole time – building rapport. I talked with the other
officers. I told them about my family and the job I was doing in Bonita
Springs. I asked them if they minded if I leaned up against van since I
was really tired. They said that was fine. I could hear the officer in
the background talking with someone explaining that I had boxes, bins
and sleeping bags in the van … and “a lot of weird stuff”. When he got
off the phone we continued ...
Officer: What is that inside your door? (I start to walk back to the
front of the van) What are you doing?
Me: You asked me what was inside my door and I don't know what you are
talking about so I was going to look. Do you want to walk back with me?
Officer: Yes, it looks like a leaf. (I open the driver's side door and
on the step up into the van is … a leaf …)
Me: Yup, officer, you got me. It is in fact a leaf. (He starts to look
under my seats and I shut the door. We return to the back of the van)
Did you get your warrant?
Officer: I am waiting for a call back. Where are your guns?
Me: In my guitar amp?
Officer: Your guns are in your guitar amp?
Me: Yes, after I took them apart and locked them up, I took my amp apart
and hid them inside.
Officer: Why would you do that?
Me: I did not want anybody to have access to them.
Officer: What about us?
Me: You are included in everybody.
He gets a call back and answers. I hear “Let him go” from the other side
of the phone. He excuses himself and gets in his car to argue with
whoever on the other side of the line. I continued to chat it up with
the other cops. When he returns.
Officer: My captain decided to let you off with a warning.
Me: Great, then good night. I am going to get some sleep.
Officer: So what are you on?
Me: What do you mean?
Officer: Alcohol, drugs?
Me: Nothing …
Officer: I am giving you a chance to be honest with me. I can't help you
if you don't tell me the truth.
Me: I don't need your help. (He give me an REM test)
Officer: Your eyes are all over the place and there are only two causes
for that.
Me: Do tell …
Officer: Either you are on some kind of substance or you are a diabetic
about to go into sugar shock.
Me: There is at least one other option.
Officer: What is that?
Me: That I am exhausted and highly caffeinated and need to sleep.
Officer: If you are really that tired, what are you doing on the road.
Me: I pulled in here to get off the road and you are stopping me from
sleeping. Do you realize that it is 11pm on Saturday. I left New
Hampshire at 5pm on Friday.
Officer: What does that mean?
Me: It means that unless I came from Maine, I came from as far away from
where we are now as you could possibly get and still be on the east
coast of this country. I have been driving for over 20 hours on about 4
hours of sleep.
Officer: What makes you an expert?
Me: Well, first off, I used to me a substance abuse recovery counselor.
You are welcome to call South Easter New Hampshire Services and ask
them. I know a bit about substances and how they work. Also my brother
has type 1 diabetes and I have seen him in a diabetic coma. If I were at
that point, REM would be the last of my worries.
Officer: Well there are other types of diabetes.
Me: I know, my grandfather has the other type.
Officer: Ok, well I am going to let you off with a warning but if you
are on ANYTHING at all, you need to stay here and sleep it off.
Me: First, I told you that I was going to stay here and sleep. Second,
you are just blowing smoke. If you thought I was actually on something,
then you would either not even give me the option of leaving or you are
the worst cop ever.
He then gives me my warning and thanks me for my cooperation. I was so
riled up … I couldn't sleep.
-
2 unrelated, yet interconnected articles:
http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/panopticon-keep-your-eyes-on-the-word/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/verizon-providing-all-call-records-to-us-under-court-order/2013/06/05/98656606-ce47-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html... but remember, its all just speculation: http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/06/the-verizonsection-215-order-and-the-clapper-mindset/
-
These disclosures are not speculation. We are already under some surveillance to at least some degree. By government and private interests. And in my case by criminals. Sometimes the entities above overlap and are not separate. The real world. If any one thinks Google, MS etc are not keeping data and don't have access to much of what we do and who we are he/she is kidding themselves.
It won't be stopped. Cannot be. OTOH we don't want intrusion into our private worlds. Yet it is happening all the time. OTOH how in the world can law enforcement have ANY hope of combating this without access to the data. The problem is what they do with it. Agencies who are surveillancing for terrorist activity MUST out of any conceivable realm of logical probability come across criminal activity or communications that do not have anything to do with Jihad. So should this be ignored? It probably is. The answer is not simple.
*****WND Exclusive: Now FBI wants back door to all software
LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER
Now FBI wants back door to all software
But leading security experts say strategy would help enemies
Published: 15 hours ago
author-imageBob Unruh About | Email | Archive
Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.
rss feed Subscribe to feed
Ads by Google
International Backgroundcriminal records,address verifiy, education and employment verify www.accinfosys.com
Printer Friendly
Text smaller
Text bigger
1120
The FBI is unhappy that there are communications technologies that it cannot intercept and wants to require that software makers and communications companies create a back door so they can listen in when they desire.
But a team of technology experts warns the move would hand over to the nation’s enemies abilities they are not capable of developing for themselves.
Ads by Google
Gold Price Falls to $750Why The Gold Price Will Fall to $750. Steps You Need to Take NOW. www.Survive-Prosper.com
Best 2013 Credit CardFind The Best Credit Cards Of 2013. Expert Reviews & Info. Apply Online ConsumerCompare.NextAdvisor.com
The Washington Post reported the issue is being raised by the FBI because “there is currently no way to wiretap some of these communications methods easily, and companies effectively.”
The solution, according to the FBI, is to fine companies when they fail to comply with wiretap orders, essentially requiring all companies to build a back door for wiretap capabilities into all their communications links.
“The importance to us is pretty clear,” FBI general counsel Andrew Weissman said in the report. “We don’t have the ability to go to court and say, ‘We need a court order to effectuate the intercept.’”
But a report by the Center for Democracy & Technology warns of unintended consequences.
“Wiretap functionality allows covert access to communications that can be exploited not only by law enforcement, but by criminals, terrorists, and foreign military and intelligence agencies,” the report said. “Wiretap endpoints will be vulnerable to exploitation and difficult to secure.”
It cited a report called “CALEA II: Risks of Wiretap Modifications to Endpoints.”
The report came just as the U.S. government was caught accessing telephone records for the Associated Press and describing a prominent Fox News journalist as a potential criminal.
It was compiled by high-profile leaders in the field such as Matt Blaze from the University of Pennsylvania, Edward Felten of Princeton, Matthew D. Green of Johns Hopkins and J. Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan.
The report said there are some drawbacks to expanding wiretap design laws to Internet services.
“Mandating wiretap capabilities in endpoints poses serious security risks,” the report said. “Requiring software vendors to build intercept functionality into their products is unwise and will be ineffective, with the result being serious consequences for the economic well-being and national security of the United States.”
Just what kind of “serious consequences”?
“The FBI’s desire to expand CALEA mandates amounts to developing for our adversaries capabilities that they may not have the competence, access, or resources to develop on their own,” the report said.
CALEA is the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which already requires some electronic surveillance possibilities. It’s the plan the FBI wants to expand to all digital forms of communication, including Skype and VoIP services.
The London Daily Mail recently reported that those technologies are hard to track because they convert analogue audio signals into digital data packets, which would have to be retrieved and reassembled.
The team of experts said that besides allowing criminals and terrorists into the networks, the strategy would require software companies to have employees do the wiretapping or give away their company secrets to law enforcement agencies.
“Finally, the wiretap capability that the FBI seeks will be ineffective because it is easily disabled and because knock-off products that lack the wiretap functionality can be readily downloaded from websites abroad. Because many of the tools that people use to communicate are built on open standards and open source software, it will be trivial to remove or disable wiretap functionality,” the report said.
According to the Post report, the draft proposal would let a court levy escalating fines against a company – fines that could double daily.
“This proposal is a non-starter that would drive innovators overseas and cost American jobs,” Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the Post.
“They might as well call it the Cyber Insecurity and Anti-Employment Act.”*****
-
ccp, the "speculation" quote is from a USSC decision not to allow a case to proceed. It is signed by all the conservative justices....
Did you read the short article linked? It is pretty interesting, and links to the opinion if you want to read it.
-
***I realize that, for many, this order will seem either unsurprising, unalarming, or both. Such is the state of the world–and of the authorities under which the government operates on an increasingly routine basis. But contrast that mentality with the skepticism at the heart of Justice Alito’s opinion for the 5-4 Supreme Court majority in February’s Clapper v. Amnesty International decision, which, in rejecting standing to challenge (admittedly different) FISA-related authorities, dismissed the plaintiffs’ allegations that their communications might be intercepted as purely “speculative.”
Justice Alito’s specific analysis aside, it’s the mindset that I just don’t get. Reasonable people can certainly disagree about the normative desirability (and, I dare say, legality) of the degree of governmental surveillance that is now underway. But can reasonable people really continue to disagree that this is the world in which we’re living?***
Appearances can be deceiving. One can speculate about a lot of things. Perhaps the "mentality" of the Supremes to dismiss *this* concern as merely speculative is telling at either their naivete or their wish to look at only hard evidence. I don't know.
I am one of those who would find this unsurprising while many others don't care because they believe it doesn't adversely affect them.
WE now know various government agencies are collecting reams of data. We still don't know how much or exactly what or what they are doing with it.
We also know many upon many liberal advocates from all over are constantly visiting the WH. We know nothing of what goes on there. A naïve person (I was one) would have wondered how such a huge conspiracy (soft tyranny) take hold under the radar without people talking.
We have seen other examples of large conspiracies of silence. Like Serpico - essentially the entire NYC police force taking bribes or looking the other way.
Like performance enhancing drugs in professional and probably most big time college sports. Lance Armstorng. Alex Rodriguez. Of course they are all doping. Yet, we only get drips and drabs of the truth because those who are on the inside and know what is going on are keeping quiet.
Same in music industry. I can way (without proof) that virtually all the lyrics and probably most of what we hear on radio, cable etc is all stolen. Yet many many people are keeping this quiet or looking the other way.
Same in Wall street insider trading. To think there *isn't* massive espionage going on would be crazy - not vice a versa. Too much money involved.
To think all these hundreds of liberal political activists who work for the government, the media, and private industries are visiting the WH and all this data is not being used against their political adversaries is naïve. One may still call it speculative - but with much corroborative evidence can reasonable people agree something is rotten in Denmark (DC).
Like the author above I would not dismiss it. Of course I am not a Supreme Court Justice - I am just another Joe.
-
http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/
READ it all.
-
Here's a nice little loophole that lets government look at your private
emails .... and we're not just talking "metadata".
http://www.businessinsider.com/when-can-the-government-read-your-email-2013-6
-
second entry http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20130615/e91544a8-e9bf-4bc9-9359-cc11897f968f
-
http://www.mrconservative.com/2013/06/19304-oregon-turning-traffic-cameras-into-big-brother-surveillance-system/
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/us/police-agencies-are-assembling-records-of-dna.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130613
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/us/police-agencies-are-assembling-records-of-dna.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130613
Is this somehow different than fingerprint databases ?
-
Fair enough I suppose , , , but , , ,
http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/06/19/living-in-fear-welcome-to-fascist-america/?singlepage=true
-
http://rt.com/news/search-duckduckgo-popularity-nsa-956/
-
Hat tip to David Gordon:
The internet is spying on you
Every time you go online, sophisticated data miners are tracking your every move. What do they know about you?
How to fight back against data miners
How frequently am I followed online?
Constantly. Your computer leaves a unique digital trail every time you visit a website, post a comment on a blog, or add a photo to your Facebook wall. A growing number of companies follow that trail to assemble a profile of you and your affinities. These profiles can contain shocking levels of detail—including your age, income, shopping habits, health problems, sexual proclivities, and ZIP code—right down to the number of rooms in your house and the number of people in your family. Although trackers don’t identify their subjects by name, the data they compile is so extensive that “you can find out who an individual is without it,” says Maneesha Mithal of the Federal Trade Commission.
How does the technology work?
The moment you land on a website, it installs a unique electronic code on your hard drive. Owners of websites originally placed “cookies,” the simplest such codes, on computers for users’ convenience, in order to remember things like the contents of online shopping carts. But a cookie placed by one site can also serve as a tracking device that allows marketers to identify an individual computer and follow its path on every Web visit. It’s like a clerk who sells you a pair of jeans at one store, then trails you around the mall, recording every store you visit and every item of clothing you try on. “Beacons” are super-cookies that record even computer keystrokes and mouse movements, providing another layer of detail. “Flash cookies” are installed when a computer user activates Flash technology, such as a YouTube video, embedded on a site. They can also reinstall cookies that have been removed. Such “persistent cookies,” says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, make it “virtually impossible for users to go online without being tracked and profiled.”
Who’s doing the spying?
Marketers, advertisers, and those whose businesses depend on them. Most websites install their own cookies and beacons, both to make site navigation easier and to gather user information. (Wikipedia is a rare exception.) But third parties—advertisers and the networks that place online ads, such as Google and iAds—frequently pay site hosts to install their own tracking technology. Beacons are even sometimes planted without the knowledge of the host site. Comcast, for example, installed Flash cookies on computers visiting its website after it accepted Clearspring Technologies’ free software for displaying slide shows. Visitors who clicked on a slide show at Comcast.com wound up loading Clearspring’s Flash cookies onto their hard drives, which Comcast said it had never authorized.
How is personal data used?
It’s collected and sold by companies like Clearspring. Such information can be sold in large chunks—for example, an advertiser might pay $1 for 1,000 profiles of movie lovers—or in customized segments. An apparel retailer might buy access to 18-year-old female fans of the Twilight movie series who reside in the Sunbelt. “We can segment it all the way down to one person,” says Eric Porres of Lotame, which sells these profiles. Advertisers use the profiles to deliver individualized ads that follow users to every site they visit. Julia Preston, a 32-year-old software designer from Austin, recently saw how this works firsthand when she started seeing lots of Web ads for fertility treatments. She had recently researched uterine disorders online. “It’s unnerving,” she says.
Is all this snooping legal?
So far, yes. While an e-commerce site can’t sell to third parties the credit card numbers it acquires in the course of its business, the legality of various tracking technologies—and the sale of the personal profiles that result—has never been tested in court. Privacy advocates say that’s not because there aren’t abundant abuses, but because the law hasn’t kept pace with advancing technology. “The relevant laws,” says Lauren Weinstein of People for Internet Responsibility, an advocacy group, “are generally so weak—if they exist at all—that it’s difficult to file complaints.”
Can you avoid revealing yourself online?
Aside from abandoning the Internet altogether, there’s virtually no way to evade prying eyes. Take the case of Ashley Hayes-Beaty, who learned just how exposed she was when The Wall Street Journal shared what it had learned about her from a data miner. Hayes-Beaty’s computer use identified her as a 26-year-old female Nashville resident who counts The Princess Bride and 50 First Dates among her favorite movies, regularly watches Sex and the City, keeps current on entertainment news, and enjoys taking pop-culture quizzes. That litany, which advertisers can buy for about one-tenth of a cent, constitutes what Hayes-Beaty calls an “eerily precise” consumer profile. “I like to think I have some mystery left to me,” says Hayes-Beaty, “but apparently not.”
There are ways to minimize your exposure to data miners. One of the most effective is to disrupt profile-building by clearing your computer browser’s cache and deleting all cookies at least once a week. In addition, turning on the “private browsing” feature included in most popular Web browsers will block tracking technologies from installing themselves on your machine. For fees ranging from $9.95 to $10,000, companies like ReputationDefender can remove your personal information from up to 90 percent of commercial websites. But it’s basically impossible to eradicate personal information, such as property records and police files, from government databases. “There’s really no solution now, except abstinence” from the Internet, says Lt. Col. Greg Conti, a computer science professor at West Point. “And if you choose not to use online tools, you’re really not a member of the 21st century.”
-
That's why Google claiming to want to be more transparent about government requests for private data is a joke.
Google et al are just as much the problem. To hear their PR people crying foul is ridiculous. They do the same thing to us all time.
Yes there is no way out.
One would not want to be a target as I became for any reason by anyone with clout, money or connections.
Your life will be hell and nothing you can do about it.
-
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/20/194505/government-could-use-metadata.html#.UcO_WZywUpl
-
The implications of PRISM continue to grow. :-o
http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/20/19061109-lawyers-eye-nsa-data-as-treasure-trove-for-evidence-in-murder-divorce-cases?lite
=============================
http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/18/19025074-dont-mess-with-texas-email-state-law-ends-some-warrantless-email-searches
Don't mess with Texas email: State law ends some warrantless email searches
By Bob Sullivan, Columnist, NBC News
Texas residents will have a little more protection from the prying eyes of local law enforcement than the rest of America starting in September. A law that takes effect in the fall ends warrantless email searches by state law enforcement officials, in a step that might have implications for email snooping laws around the country.
The new law cancels out a Texas provision that had allowed state, county, and local cops to access emails stored on third-party services like Gmail or Yahoo under certain circumstances without requiring a judge's finding of probable cause.
It was passed by the Texas statehouse long before the recent string of disclosures about the National Security Agency allegedly snooping on U.S citizens, but signed into law on Monday by Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The Texas law is very limited, however: Federal law enforcement officials can still access some Texas residents' third-party emails by issuing a simple subpoena to the companies where the information is stored.
Advertise | AdChoices
But the action in Texas, the first such anti-email-snooping legislation in the nation, might create momentum for a proposed update to similar provisions in federal law.
Privacy advocates cheered the measure.
"Given the central role that email plays today in business and personal communications, and given the reasonable expectation of privacy that Americans have when it comes to those emails, judicial review should be required before law enforcement obtains the content of any citizen’s email," said Rob Douglas, a former Washington D.C. prosecutor and privacy law expert. "The federal government – along with all other states – should follow Texas’ lead and require warrants before the police can seize the content of any email."
How both Texas law and federal law came to allow warrantless email searches is a tortured tale that has largely been ignored during the current NSA controversy. Much of the discussion in the wake of leaker Edward Snowden's disclosures has surrounded the distinction between access to information about communications — metadata — and the content of those communications — which generally require a wiretap order to obtain. (See previous story on the hazy distinction between listening and watching.)
There is another way that law enforcement can legally obtain the contents of communication, such as email, without a search warrant, however. It's permitted by the Stored Communications Act of 1986, which is part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. This part of the law only makes sense to people who recall the days of computer time sharing, when users at terminals remotely connected to centralized computers on a temporary basis.
In general, federal law holds that citizens who give information to third parties surrender their expectation of privacy for that information. That means in some cases that while government officials can't demand that you or your email recipient reveal contents of private messages without a warrant, those officials can ask Gmail or Yahoo for that data.
The Stored Communications Act draws a distinction between "Remote Computing Services" and "Electronic Communications Services." Basically, when citizens are temporarily using a remote computer to deliver a message, that data is protected the same way the contents of a letter are protected while in transit at the post office. But when emails leave their data on the servers of these third parties, they are now considered an electronic communication service and fair game for subpoena-wielding law enforcement officials.
(For specifics, such as the 180-day distinction, click here.)
Most states — including Texas, until now — have copycat provisions which grant the same access to local law enforcement.
This made some sense in 1986 when no one dreamed of storing thousands of emails on remote servers. Today, that's common. And while efforts to change federal law have been sluggish, federal courts have already taken steps in that direction. In 2010, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in U.S. vs. Warshak that this part of the Stored Communications Act was unconstitutional. Other courts have upheld the Stored Communications Act, meaning there is a court split that has yet to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, so it's unclear if the law applies nationally.
Google, however, currently acts as if the Warshak decision is law of the land. It announced after the circuit court ruling that it would require search warrants before handing over Gmail account contents requested under the Stored Communications Act.
There is little argument that the law, and the entire Electronic Communications Privacy Act, requires updating. Several updates have been proposed, most recently ECPA 2013, sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.
But until Congress acts on the legislation, and the president signs it, those concerned about the prying eyes of law enforcement might consider relocating to the Lone Star State.
Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.
-
WASHINGTON — When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010, he did not go to Google, Twitter or a similar Silicon Valley concern. Instead the man who was responsible for protecting the personal information of Facebook’s more than one billion users from outside attacks went to work for another giant institution that manages and analyzes large pools of data: the National Security Agency. Mr. Kelly’s move to the spy agency, which has not previously been reported, underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans.
The only difference is that the N.S.A. does it for intelligence, and Silicon Valley does it to make money.
The disclosure of the spy agency’s program called Prism, which is said to collect the e-mails and other Web activity of foreigners using major Internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook, has prompted the companies to deny that the agency has direct access to their computers, even as they acknowledge complying with secret N.S.A. court orders for specific data.
Yet technology experts and former intelligence officials say the convergence between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. and the rise of data mining — both as an industry and as a crucial intelligence tool — have created a more complex reality.
Silicon Valley has what the spy agency wants: vast amounts of private data and the most sophisticated software available to analyze it. The agency in turn is one of Silicon Valley’s largest customers for what is known as data analytics, one of the valley’s fastest-growing markets. To get their hands on the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large volumes of data, United States intelligence agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts like Mr. Kelly.
“We are all in these Big Data business models,” said Ray Wang, a technology analyst and chief executive of Constellation Research, based in San Francisco. “There are a lot of connections now because the data scientists and the folks who are building these systems have a lot of common interests.”
Although Silicon Valley has sold equipment to the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies for a generation, the interests of the two began to converge in new ways in the last few years as advances in computer storage technology drastically reduced the costs of storing enormous amounts of data — at the same time that the value of the data for use in consumer marketing began to rise. “These worlds overlap,” said Philipp S. Krüger, chief executive of Explorist, an Internet start-up in New York.
The sums the N.S.A. spends in Silicon Valley are classified, as is the agency’s total budget, which independent analysts say is $8 billion to $10 billion a year.
Despite the companies’ assertions that they cooperate with the agency only when legally compelled, current and former industry officials say the companies sometimes secretly put together teams of in-house experts to find ways to cooperate more completely with the N.S.A. and to make their customers’ information more accessible to the agency. The companies do so, the officials say, because they want to control the process themselves. They are also under subtle but powerful pressure from the N.S.A. to make access easier.
Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies.
Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011.
A Skype executive denied last year in a blog post that recent changes in the way Skype operated were made at the behest of Microsoft to make snooping easier for law enforcement. It appears, however, that Skype figured out how to cooperate with the intelligence community before Microsoft took over the company, according to documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the N.S.A. One of the documents about the Prism program made public by Mr. Snowden says Skype joined Prism on Feb. 6, 2011.
Microsoft executives are no longer willing to affirm statements, made by Skype several years ago, that Skype calls could not be wiretapped. Frank X. Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman, declined to comment.
In its recruiting in Silicon Valley, the N.S.A. sends some of its most senior officials to lure the best of the best. No less than Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the agency’s director and the chief of the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, showed up at one of the world’s largest hacker conferences in Las Vegas last summer, looking stiff in an uncharacteristic T-shirt and jeans, to give the keynote speech. His main purpose at Defcon, the conference, was to recruit hackers for his spy agency.
N.S.A. badges are often seen on the lapels of officials at other technology and information security conferences. “They’re very open about their interest in recruiting from the hacker community,” said Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.
-
God bless our FF and the wisdom of Federalism!
WSJ
Montana Requires Warrants for Cell Phone Tracking
By Joe Palazzolo
With little fanfare, Montana became the first state to require police to obtain a warrant before tracking the location of a suspect in a criminal investigation through his cell phone.
House Bill 603, sponsored by Rep. Daniel Zolnikov, a Republican, was signed into law on May 6. The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the new law in a blog post Friday as the first of its kind.
From the bill:
Section 1. Location information privacy — civil penalty. (1) Except as provided in subsection (2), a government entity may not obtain the location information of an electronic device without a search warrant issued by a duly authorized court.
(2) A government entity may obtain location information of an electronic device under any of the following circumstances:
(a) the device is reported stolen by the owner;
(b) in order to respond to the user’s call for emergency services;
(c) with the informed, affirmative consent of the owner or user of the electronic device; or
(d) there exists a possible life-threatening situation.
(3) Any evidence obtained in violation of this section is not admissible in a civil, criminal, or administrative
proceeding and may not be used in an affidavit of probable cause in an effort to obtain a search warrant.
(4) A violation of this section will result in a civil fine not to exceed $50.
It was Mr. Zolnikov’s first successful bill.
The 26-year-old legislator, who is serving his first term, also introduced a sweeping privacy bill that would have required companies to obtain consent to collect personal information, as well as consent to sell that information.
“‘Very overreaching,’ is how it was described,” Mr. Zolnikov told Law Blog.
Mr. Zolnikov said he drew inspiration for the cell-phone location bill from similar legislation in Texas. Ultimately, the Texas legislature put off the issue until next session. A cell-phone location bill in Maine has passed both houses but hasn’t reached the governor’s desk yet, because of a last-minute fiscal note, according to the ACLU.
-
But appeal challenges constitutionality of cops' fear of AK-47
Published: 39 mins ago Saturday June 22, 2013
Bob Unruh
A Texas citizen is asking a state appeals court to decide whether police are justified in launching a no-knock raid on a home they want to search simply because they believe there is a gun inside.
“Whatever the issue might be, whether it’s mass surveillance, no-knock raids, or the right to freely express one’s views about the government, we’ve moved into a new age in which the rights of the citizenry are being treated as a secondary concern by the White House, Congress, the courts and their vast holding of employees, including law enforcement officials,” said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, which is defending John Gerard Quinn.
The controversy arose after police officers in Texas executed a no-knock raid on Quinn’s home, based on their belief there was an AK-47 rifle inside.
In its appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the Rutherford Institute pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a no-knock entry is justified only with a specific warrant or if officers believe someone might be hurt or evidence might be lost.
“Here, the police based their no-knock entry solely upon their suspicion that the occupants of the residence may have been in possession of a rifle,” the appeal explains. “That the suspected possession of weapons was the only ‘justification’ for use of a no-knock entry in this case is undisputed.”
The petition asks that the court establish that an individual’s exercise of his Second Amendment right to possess a firearm in his residence does not deprive him of his Fourth Amendment protection against “no-knock” searches.
Quinn’s home had been “stormed by a SWAT team that failed to knock and announce its entry in keeping with police protocol for non-violent situations,” Rutherford said.
“Although the SWAT team had been granted a search warrant on the basis of leads provided by informants that Quinn’s son may have been involved in drug activity, the warrant did not authorize police to enter the residence without knocking and announcing their entry.”
The SWAT team forcibly broke into Quinn’s home after he had gone to bed and proceeded to carry out a search of the premises. The raid resulted in police finding less than one gram of cocaine, which Quinn was charged with possessing.
The appeal also raises other constitutional issues, including a defective answer from a judge to the jury deliberating the case and the inappropriate use of evidence that should have been suppressed.
But on the issue of the gun in the home, the brief argues that the Supreme Court never has held that suspected possession of firearms is sufficient cause, without more, to justify a no-knock entry.
The brief also criticizes earlier court comments about the AK-47.
“The [court] seems to think than an ‘AK-47′ rifle is some sort of ‘exceptionally’ dangerous weapon. Actually, despite the faux mystique surrounding that particular type of rifle fostered by popular media, the AK-47 is not uniquely dangerous,” a footnote in the brief explains. “It is the most-used rifle in the world because there are 100 million of them, it is cheap to make and easy to repair, and because it can be chambered for a wide variety of calibers.
“When chambered for .223 caliber … it is no more dangerous than any other .223 caliber rifle such as the AR-15 – the most widely used hunting rifle in the U.S. today,” the footnote says.
“As a gun collector who prudently kept his legally owned collection safely secured in gun vaults, it was altogether possible that Mr. Quinn could have had a large number of guns in his home and no ammunition. The point here is not to argue that ‘possession’ of guns does not roughly or usually equate to possession of ‘working’ guns. The point is: an AK-47 is no more powerful – and is indeed less powerful – than many common hunting rifles.
“The police, being weapons experts, obviously knew this – but testified about the ‘dangerous’ nature of this particular gun because they knew the jury would have heard of it in the media and would know about its mystique as the weapon of choice for terrorists around the world. Clever, but misleading.”
http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/gun-owner-targeted-with-no-knock-raid/#Dj6hGxeuySTD8xGD.99
-
http://vimeo.com/67763977
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/26/drone-falls-dangerously-out-of-sky-local-news-station-reveals-what-it-had-been-filming/
-
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/dutch-artists-celebrate-george-orwells-birthday-by-adorning
-
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/07/01/military-turns-to-blimp-in-box-for-surveillance/
-
http://savingtherepublic.com/blog/2013/06/neil-cavuto-goes-nuclear-on-liberal-mouthpiece-julian-epstein-cuts-his-mic-drop-the-liberal-thing-focus-on-the-reality-thing/
-
By RON NIXON
Published: July 3, 2013 376 Comments
WASHINGTON — Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: A handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.
“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.
“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.
As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.
Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, but that is only a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.
Together, the two programs show that snail mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail.
The mail covers program, used to monitor Mr. Pickering, is more than a century old but is still considered a powerful tool. At the request of law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered. (Actually opening the mail requires a warrant.) The information is sent to whatever law enforcement agency asked for it. Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny.
The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retroactively track mail correspondence at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping.
“In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime,” said Mark D. Rasch, who started a computer crimes unit in the criminal division’s fraud section of the Justice Department and worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. “Now it seems to be ‘Let’s record everyone’s mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.’ Essentially you’ve added mail covers on millions of Americans.”
Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert and an author, said whether it was a postal worker taking down information or a computer taking images, the program was still an invasion of privacy.
“Basically they are doing the same thing as the other programs, collecting the information on the outside of your mail, the metadata, if you will, of names, addresses, return addresses and postmark locations, which gives the government a pretty good map of your contacts, even if they aren’t reading the contents,” he said.
But law enforcement officials said mail covers and the automatic mail tracking program are invaluable, even in an era of smartphones and e-mail.
In a criminal complaint filed June 7 in Federal District Court in Eastern Texas, the F.B.I. said a postal investigator tracing the ricin letters was able to narrow the search to Shannon Guess Richardson, an actress in New Boston, Tex., by examining information from the front and back images of 60 pieces of mail scanned immediately before and after the tainted letters sent to Mr. Obama and Mr. Bloomberg showing return addresses near her home. Ms. Richardson had originally accused her husband of mailing the letters, but investigators determined that he was at work during the time they were mailed.
In 2007, the F.B.I., the Internal Revenue Service and the local police in Charlotte, N.C., used information gleaned from the mail cover program to arrest Sallie Wamsley-Saxon and her husband, Donald, charging both with running a prostitution ring that took in $3 million over six years. Prosecutors said it was one of the largest and most successful such operations in the country. Investigators also used mail covers to help track banking activity and other businesses the couple operated under different names.
Other agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, have used mail covers to track drug smugglers and Medicare fraud.
“It’s a treasure trove of information,” said James J. Wedick, a former F.B.I. agent who spent 34 years at the agency and who said he used mail covers in a number of investigations, including one that led to the prosecution of several elected officials in California on corruption charges. “Looking at just the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who you bank with, who you communicate with — all kinds of useful information that gives investigators leads that they can then follow up on with a subpoena.”
But, he said: “It can be easily abused because it’s so easy to use and you don’t have to go through a judge to get the information. You just fill out a form.”
For mail cover requests, law enforcement agencies simply submit a letter to the Postal Service, which can grant or deny a request without judicial review. Law enforcement officials say the Postal Service rarely denies a request. In other government surveillance programs, such as wiretaps, a federal judge must sign off on the requests.
The mail cover surveillance requests are granted for about 30 days, and can be extended for up to 120 days. There are two kinds of mail covers: those related to criminal activity and those requested to protect national security. The criminal activity requests average 15,000 to 20,000 per year, said law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the requests. The number of requests for antiterrorism mail covers has not been made public.
Law enforcement officials need warrants to open the mail, although President George W. Bush asserted in a signing statement in 2007 that the federal government had the authority to open mail without warrants in emergencies or foreign intelligence cases.
Court challenges to mail covers have generally failed because judges have ruled that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for information contained on the outside of a letter. Officials in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, in fact, have used the mail-cover court rulings to justify the N.S.A.’s surveillance programs, saying the electronic monitoring amounts to the same thing as a mail cover. Congress briefly conducted hearings on mail cover programs in 1976, but has not revisited the issue.
The program has led to sporadic reports of abuse. In May 2012, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, was awarded nearly $1 million by a federal judge after winning a lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for his immigration raids in Arizona, who, among other things, obtained mail covers from the Postal Service to track her mail. The judge called the investigation into Ms. Wilcox politically motivated because she had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps. The case is being appealed.
In the mid-1970s the Church Committee, a Senate panel that documented C.I.A. abuses, faulted a program created in the 1950s in New York that used mail covers to trace and sometimes open mail going to the Soviet Union from the United States.
A suit brought in 1973 by a high school student in New Jersey, whose letter to the Socialist Workers Party was traced by the F.B.I. as part of an investigation into the group, led to a rebuke from a federal judge.
Postal officials refused to discuss either mail covers or the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program.
Mr. Pickering says he suspects that the F.B.I. requested the mail cover to monitor his mail because a former associate said the bureau had called with questions about him. Last month, he filed a lawsuit against the Postal Service, the F.B.I. and other agencies, saying they were improperly withholding information.
A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Buffalo declined to comment.
Mr. Pickering said that although he was arrested two dozen times for acts of civil disobedience and convicted of a handful of misdemeanors, he was never involved in the arson attacks the Earth Liberation Front carried out. He said he became tired of focusing only on environmental activism and moved back to Buffalo to finish college, open his bookstore, Burning Books, and start a family.
“I’m no terrorist,” he said. “I’m an activist.”
Mr. Pickering has written books sympathetic to the liberation front, but he said his political views and past association should not make him the target of a federal investigation. “I’m just a guy who runs a bookstore and has a wife and a kid,” he said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 3, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated the Justice Department position once held by Mark Rasch. He started a computer crimes unit in the criminal division’s fraud section, but he was not the head of its computer crimes unit, which was created after his departure.
-
second post
A friend writes:
"In New York and Baltimore, police cameras scan public areas twenty-four hours a day. Huge commercial databases track you finances and sell that information to anyone willing to pay. Host sites on the World Wide Web record every page you view, and “smart” toll roads know where you drive. Every day, new technology nibbles at our privacy.Does that make you nervous? David Brin is worried, but not just about privacy. He fears that society will overreact to these technologies by restricting the flow of information, frantically enforcing a reign of secrecy. Such measures, he warns, won’t really preserve our privacy. Governments, the wealthy, criminals, and the techno-elite will still find ways to watch us. But we’ll have fewer ways to watch them. We’ll lose the key to a free society: accountability.The Transparent Society is a call for “reciprocal transparency.” If police cameras watch us, shouldn’t we be able to watch police stations? If credit bureaus sell our data, shouldn't we know who buys it? Rather than cling to an illusion of anonymity-a historical anomaly, given our origins in close-knit villages-we should focus on guarding the most important forms of privacy and preserving mutual accountability. The biggest threat to our freedom, Brin warns, is that surveillance technology will be used by too few people, now by too many.A society of glass houses may seem too fragile. Fearing technology-aided crime, governments seek to restrict online anonymity; fearing technology-aided tyranny, citizens call for encrypting all data. Brins shows how, contrary to both approaches, windows offer us much better protection than walls; after all, the strongest deterrent against snooping has always been the fear of being spotted. Furthermore, Brin argues, Western culture now encourages eccentricity-we’re programmed to rebel! That gives our society a natural protection against error and wrong-doing, like a body’s immune system. But “social T-cells” need openness to spot trouble and get the word out. The Transparent Society is full of such provocative and far-reaching analysis.The inescapable rush of technology is forcing us to make new choices about how we want to live. This daring book reminds us that an open society is more robust and flexible than one where secrecy reigns. In an era of gnat-sized cameras, universal databases, and clothes-penetrating radar, it will be more vital than ever for us to be able to watch the watchers. With reciprocal transparency we can detect dangers early and expose wrong-doers. We can gauge the credibility of pundits and politicians. We can share technological advances and news. But all of these benefits depend on the free, two-way flow of information."
http://www.amazon.com/Transparent-Society-Technology-Between-Privacy/dp/0738201448/
-
I tend to agree.
second post
A friend writes:
"In New York and Baltimore, police cameras scan public areas twenty-four hours a day. Huge commercial databases track you finances and sell that information to anyone willing to pay. Host sites on the World Wide Web record every page you view, and “smart” toll roads know where you drive. Every day, new technology nibbles at our privacy.Does that make you nervous? David Brin is worried, but not just about privacy. He fears that society will overreact to these technologies by restricting the flow of information, frantically enforcing a reign of secrecy. Such measures, he warns, won’t really preserve our privacy. Governments, the wealthy, criminals, and the techno-elite will still find ways to watch us. But we’ll have fewer ways to watch them. We’ll lose the key to a free society: accountability.The Transparent Society is a call for “reciprocal transparency.” If police cameras watch us, shouldn’t we be able to watch police stations? If credit bureaus sell our data, shouldn't we know who buys it? Rather than cling to an illusion of anonymity-a historical anomaly, given our origins in close-knit villages-we should focus on guarding the most important forms of privacy and preserving mutual accountability. The biggest threat to our freedom, Brin warns, is that surveillance technology will be used by too few people, now by too many.A society of glass houses may seem too fragile. Fearing technology-aided crime, governments seek to restrict online anonymity; fearing technology-aided tyranny, citizens call for encrypting all data. Brins shows how, contrary to both approaches, windows offer us much better protection than walls; after all, the strongest deterrent against snooping has always been the fear of being spotted. Furthermore, Brin argues, Western culture now encourages eccentricity-we’re programmed to rebel! That gives our society a natural protection against error and wrong-doing, like a body’s immune system. But “social T-cells” need openness to spot trouble and get the word out. The Transparent Society is full of such provocative and far-reaching analysis.The inescapable rush of technology is forcing us to make new choices about how we want to live. This daring book reminds us that an open society is more robust and flexible than one where secrecy reigns. In an era of gnat-sized cameras, universal databases, and clothes-penetrating radar, it will be more vital than ever for us to be able to watch the watchers. With reciprocal transparency we can detect dangers early and expose wrong-doers. We can gauge the credibility of pundits and politicians. We can share technological advances and news. But all of these benefits depend on the free, two-way flow of information."
http://www.amazon.com/Transparent-Society-Technology-Between-Privacy/dp/0738201448/
-
The concept of double transparency is interesting. It is kind of a mea culpa to the inevitable I guess. A kind of mutually assured destruction for everyone.
The only way double transparency could work in a fair and equitable world is to have cameras and audio cover every single inch of the planet and allow everyone access to all of it.
-
It is an intriguing notion and that is why I posted it, but I am not persuaded (yet?)
Ultimately doesn't there need to be an ability to have a revolution for freedom to be enforceable?
Is that ability present in the presence of an omnipresent omnipotent state? Even if we know everything about it?
-
U.S. Border Agency Allows Others to Use Its Drones
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
Customs and Border Protection Agency said data collected by drones could be shared with other government agencies.
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: July 3, 2013
As Congress considers a new immigration law that would expand the fleet of unmanned drones along the border, the agency in charge of border protection is increasingly offering the military-grade drones it already owns to domestic law enforcement agencies and has considered equipping them with “nonlethal weapons,” according to documents recently made public.
The documents, which include flight logs over the last three years, were unearthed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
Agencies that have used the 10 Predator drones owned by the Customs and Border Protection Agency have deployed them to investigate fishing violations, search for missing persons and inspect levees along the Mississippi River, among other things.
Three years ago, the drones were used by other agencies 30 times; in 2012, that jumped to 250 times. How the agency stores and shares that data with other government agencies remains unclear.
Additionally, the agency, in a 2010 report to Congress included in the documents, raised the possibility of eventually equipping its drones with “nonlethal weapons” to “immobilize” people and vehicles trying to cross the border illegally. In a statement on Wednesday, the agency said it had “no plans to arm its unmanned aircraft systems with nonlethal weapons or weapons of any kind.”
It said the drones supported the agency’s border security mission and provided “an important surveillance and reconnaissance capability for interdiction agents on the ground and on the waterways.”
The drones, the agency said, “were designed with the ability to add new surveillance capabilities, accommodate technological developments, and ensure that our systems are equipped with the most advanced resources available.”
The specter of drones in American skies has been contentious, far more so than other common surveillance tools. Proponents of drones, including the military contractors who build many of them, say they can be useful for a variety of purposes, like monitoring crops and finding missing children, and a handful of police agencies have already bought small, lightweight unmanned vehicles that can fly for short bursts of time.
Skeptics say the use of drones raises the prospect of ubiquitous monitoring, especially by law enforcement, and several states have already proposed measures to restrict their use by police.
“What concerns me is the lack of clear, transparent rules for domestic drone use,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from Northern California, who recently introduced legislation to limit their use in domestic airspace. She said she was concerned about “the government’s increased interest in using drones for domestic surveillance and security, including the potential use of force. But the law today has weak requirements for individual privacy protection, transparency of drone use, and limitations on arming drones with weapons.”
Ms. Lofgren was co-sponsor of a bill in the House earlier this year that would among other things prohibit the use of firearms on drones in domestic airspace, though, not necessarily other weapons like tear gas or pellets.
The agency has used Predator drones, the same vehicles used overseas by the United States military, since 2005. Built by General Atomics, the drones weigh about 10,500 pounds and can fly for 20 hours nonstop. They are based in Arizona, Florida, North Dakota and Texas.
“C.B.P. needs to assure the public that it will not equip its Predators with any weapons — lethal or otherwise,” Jennifer Lynch wrote for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, based in San Francisco, in a blog post on Wednesday about the documents. “Without first addressing these issues, the agency — and Congress — should halt the expansion of C.B.P.’s Predator drone program.”
The flight logs provided by the agency show that it has become increasingly generous with its unmanned aerial vehicles. They have been used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the North Dakota Army National Guard, Texas Department of Public Safety and the United States Forest Service, among others.
The use of drones by the F.B.I. came to light only two weeks ago, when its director, Robert S. Mueller III, in response to a question, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that unmanned aerial vehicles were “very seldom used” by his agents. He went on to say the agency was developing guidelines on their appropriate use. An earlier information request filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggested that the F.B.I. had at least three drones in its possession as of 2011, when that request was filed.
The border agency said that when conducting joint operations with state, local and other federal agencies, its own privacy policies governed the use of data collected by the drones and “the live feed from any aircraft is encrypted and only accessible to those with specific clearance.”
An audit by the Department of Homeland Security last year criticized the border agency for failing to put in place enough resources to maintain its drones and coordinate their deployment. At the time, the agency recommended holding off on any further acquisitions.
Nonetheless, the border agency now stands to increase its fleet. The Senate immigration bill, passed last week, authorizes the agency to buy four additional drones, along with new radar equipment.
Other documents obtained earlier this year by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington, had found that cameras attached to the Predators could distinguish between a human figure and a beast, but did not use facial recognition technology.
Privacy advocates worry about the prospect of law enforcement officials using drones to patrol particular areas for long stretches of time or to follow particular individuals without a warrant.
“The danger comes from dragnet surveillance,” is how Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, described it. He called himself mostly a champion of drone technology, but with safeguards to protect privacy.
“By dragnet I mean indiscriminate,” he said, “not in a particular situation, but just to buzz around looking for suspicious activity, which is exactly what they do on border.”
-
http://www.cpflorida.com/2013/06/17/videotaping-police-what-are-your-rights/
-
http://www.cpflorida.com/2013/06/17/videotaping-police-what-are-your-rights/
If you are a safe distance away and not interfering with law enforcement actions, then taking video is a constitutional protected activity, IMHO.
-
Exactly so!
It is both discouraging and indicative of certain mindset that there are a number of departments that have been arresting and prosecuting citizens for this.
-
Want to Defend Your Privacy?
By Doug Hornig
Happy Independence Day to our American readers, wherever they might be.
While you're enjoying friends, family, and that charbroiled steak, perhaps this is also a good time to take stock of your own state of independence. To ponder your privacy, or lack thereof, and what you might do about it.
For the record, the word "privacy" doesn't appear in the Declaration of Independence, nor anywhere in the Constitution. It's difficult at this late date to divine whether the authors of those documents had any real notion of the term or thought it worth protecting. Nevertheless, we can draw some inferences from what they did write.
The Fourth Amendment declares that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue but on probable cause." The Fifth Amendment adds that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."
An overarching right to be left alone certainly seems implied.
But what about personal electronic communications—a concept that could hardly have existed in the 18th century. Should they also be secure? That's the question before us as a society. It's been a big one for a long time now, even though it only makes the front pages when an Edward Snowden type appears.
Snowden might be the current flavor of the day, but many of his revelations are little more than yesterday's news. For example, investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald, in his book 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars, revealed how the NSA's questionable mass surveillance program—what he calls "the most dramatic expansion of NSA's power and authority in the agency's 49-year history"—was devised just days after 9/11, as an end run around the traditional requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Formerly, FISA demanded that an individual warrant be obtained if the government wanted to monitor Americans communicating overseas. But the Baby Bush administration unilaterally swept that aside. The new presidential directive granted the NSA the power to gather unlimited numbers of emails and phone calls into a database for analysis, all without the approval of Congress or any court. (Not to put everything on Dubya—Obama has essentially doubled down on this encroachment.)
Moving the surveillance totally onshore was a breeze from there. Connections between a suspect email address abroad and anyone else—accounts that either sent or received messages, whether in the United States or not—would be subject to examination. At that point, a more detailed list could be constructed, ensnaring any email addresses contacted by the suspect, and then any addresses contacted by those addresses, and so on without end.
More specifics came from whistleblower William Binney, a 30-year veteran of the NSA. Binney, who resigned from the agency in 2012 because of the dubious nature of its activities, volunteered the first public description of NSA's massive domestic spying program, called Stellar Wind, which intercepts domestic communications without protections for US citizens. Binney revealed that NSA has been given access to telecommunications companies' domestic and international billing records, and that since 9/11 the agency has intercepted between 15 and 20 trillion communications. He further disclosed that Stellar Wind was filed under the patriotic-sounding "Terrorist Surveillance Program" in order to give cover to its Constitutionally questionable nature.
We also can't pretend to be shocked just because we now know PRISM's name. The government has long employed techniques which they hide behind euphemisms like "full pipe monitoring," "sentiment analysis," and "association mapping." These involve concurrent surveillance of both email and social media, in order to build a detailed map of how evolving movements are organized. Political protests receive extremely close scrutiny, with information about them shared among federal, state, and local law enforcement officials. This is what happened with the "Occupy" demonstrations, where everything participants did was watched, every communication was recorded, and all of it was filed away for future reference. Everyone involved is now the subject of a government dossier.
Even if you're not part of a political movement, heaven help you if get caught up in some vast fishing expedition that hooks everyone who has ever visited some "suspicious" website, or even merely typed in some alarm-bell keywords.
Nor has the value of this kind of information gathering been lost on politicians. In fact, the presidential race of 2012 will likely go down as the first one in history—and it won't be the last—that was decided by who had the better Internet sniffers. Both the Romney and Obama campaigns continuously stalked voters across the Web, by installing cookies on their computers and observing the websites they visited as a means of nailing down their personal views. CampaignGrid, a Republican-affiliated firm, and Precision Network, working for the Democrats, jointly collected data on 150 million American Internet users. That's a full 80% of the entire registered voting population, for those keeping score.
Cellphones are another rich source of user data, especially when it comes to apps. If you download one, you grant to the vendor the right to gather all sorts of personal information. But then, you knew that when you read the "Permissions" document—you did read it, right?—so at least you know you can opt out.
Forget about turning off your phone's location-tracking feature (which a mere 19% of us do, Pew says). Regardless of whether it's on or off, your wireless carrier knows (and keeps a record of) where your phone is at all times it's connected to the cell network. Carriers can be forced to surrender the information to law enforcement, not to mention that they've been rather less than forthcoming about what else they may be doing with this data.
Anyone who thinks the government's ultimate goal is not to intercept and archive our every digital message, oral or written—or that it doesn't have that capability—needs to be aware of what's happening in Bluffdale, Utah, AKA the middle of nowhere. There, NSA contractors (and only those with top secret clearances) are putting the finishing touches on a staggeringly huge decryption and data storage center. James Bamford, the country's leading civilian authority on the NSA, wrote inWired of the facility's purpose, which is no less than: "to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks."
Bluffdale will cost upwards of $2 billion and occupy a million square feet of space. Included will be four 25,000-square-foot halls filled with state-of-the-art supercomputers. The ultimate goal, Bamford says, is to construct a "worldwide communications network, known as the Global Information Grid, to handle yottabytes of data." (A yottabyte is a septillion, or 1024 bytes—it's so gigantic that no one has yet coined a colloquial term for the next higher order of magnitude.)
To gather up those yottabytes, the NSA has dotted the country with a network of buildings set up at key Internet junction points. According to William Binney, the wiretaps in these secret locations are powered by highly sophisticated software that conducts "deep packet inspection," which is the ability closely to examine traffic even as it streams through the Internet's backbone cables at 10 gigbytes per second.
Fortunately, the situation is impossible but not hopeless—because whenever technology gets too intrusive, the free market nearly always reacts with some kind of solution. And that's the case here. As the surveillers extended their reach, enterprising liberty lovers immediately began developing countermeasures.
Keep in mind, however, that the technologies outlined below can only lessen your shadow so much, catching a little less attention from the all-seeing eye of Sauron. No one solution provides perfect privacy, and when push comes to shove and a government official shows up with a warrant in hand, he or she will inevitably get access to anything needed.
The first area to consider addressing is the digital trail you leave when researching any topic that might be of concern to someone's prying eyes (or, for that matter, doing anything at all on the Internet which you don't want analyzed, packaged, and sold).
One option for dealing with this concern is Tor, which is free and open source. According to its website, the service was "originally developed … for the primary purpose of protecting government communications. Today, it is used every day for a wide variety of purposes by normal people, the military, journalists, law enforcement officers, activists, and many others."
Tor tackles the problem of traffic analysis head on:
"How does traffic analysis work? Internet data packets have two parts: a data payload and a header used for routing. The data payload is whatever is being sent, whether that's an email message, a web page, or an audio file. Even if you encrypt the data payload of your communications, traffic analysis still reveals a great deal about what you're doing and, possibly, what you're saying. That's because it focuses on the header, which discloses source, destination, size, timing, and so on…
"Some attackers spy on multiple parts of the Internet and use sophisticated statistical techniques to track the communications patterns of many different organizations and individuals. Encryption does not help against these attackers, since it only hides the content of Internet traffic, not the headers."
To combat this, Tor has created a distributed network of users called a VPN (virtual private network). All data packets on that network "take a random pathway through several relays that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it's going."
One of the beauties of Tor is that it's packaged all up in single download. Just install the Tor browser—a privacy-tuned clone of the popular open-source Firefox browser—and it automatically manages all the networking for you. Surf in relative privacy with just a few clicks.
For more advanced users, there are options to route all kinds of activities through the network other than web browsing, such as Skype calls and file sharing.
Tor also offers Orbot, an Android application that allows mobile phone users to access the Web, instant messaging, and email without being monitored or blocked by a mobile ISP. It won't get you around those pesky data limits, but it will certainly reduce the amount of data your ISP can provide about you. If you find yourself in a region where access to certain services is restricted, it will open those options back up to you.
Cryptohippie is another site that utilizes the privacy capabilities of a VPN. According to the company, its subscription-based Road Warrior product "creates a strongly encrypted connection from your computer to the Cryptohippie anonymity network. From there, your traffic passes through at least two national jurisdictions, loses all association with your identifiers and emerges from our network at a distant location. But, even with all of this going on, you can surf, check your email, use Skype, and everything else exactly as you have been. Unless you reveal it yourself, no one can see who you are or what your data may be."
The service is well aware of the ever-present possibility of government interference with its operations. Thus Cryptohippie is truly international. Its only US presence is to authenticate connections to its servers in other countries. None of its servers are in the States.
(Of course, if you use Tor or Cryptohippie to log in to secured sites like Amazon or eBay, your activities at that end will still be logged to a database and associated with you, so don't delude yourself that such tools make you invisible. All they can do is keep your activity limited to the two parties involved—you and the computer or person on the other end—and keep outsiders from knowing that the conversation is taking place.)
These are highly sophisticated products. Perhaps you don't think you need that level of protection, but would just like to keep your browsing habits private. All of the major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome, have a "clear browsing history" button. They also have "enable private browsing" functions that you can activate.
How much value these options actually have is questionable, but in any event they're not going to stop Google from archiving your searches, if that's the engine you use. (And who doesn't?) So if you don't want that, you can use a different search service, like DuckDuckGo, whose strict non-tracking policy is entertainingly presented in graphic form. Try it out in comparison to Google, and you'll find that the results are reasonably similar (although it seems odd at first not to have that strip of ads running down the right side of the screen). DuckDuckGo reports that it has seen a big increase in users since Snowden came forward.
Another area to consider addressing is your email. If you'd rather not have your email subject to daily inspection for "watchwords" our guardians consider inflammatory, one option is to use a foreign provider that will be less inclined to comply when Washington comes knocking with a "request" for user data. There are countless providers to choose from, including:
• Swissmail.org, which is obviously domiciled in Switzerland;
• Neomailbox.com, located in the Netherlands;
• CounterMail.com in Sweden;
• TrilightZone.org in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, and Malaysia; and
• Anonymousspeech.com, which boasts over 600,000 subscribers and is unusual in that it has no central location. "Our servers," the company says, "are constantly moving in different countries (Malaysia, Japan, Panama, etc.) and are always outside the US and Europe."
Whichever provider you choose, just be sure they offer at least an SSL connection to its services at all times. That will stop someone from downloading your email right off the wire. Features like encrypted storage and domicile in a state known for protecting privacy are also nice features.
The latest entrant in the privacy space is Silent Circle, a company whose story is worth detailing, because it has placed itself squarely in the forefront of the clash between alleged governmental need-to-know and personal privacy rights.
Silent Circle's CEO is Mike Janke, a former Navy SEAL commando and international security contractor who has gathered around him a megastar cast of techies, including most prominently, the legendary Phil Zimmermann, godfather of private data encryption and creator of the original PGP, which remains the world's most-utilized security system. Also on board are Jon Callas, the man behind Apple's whole-disk encryption, which is used to secure hard drives in Macs across the world; and Vincent Moscaritolo, a top cryptographic engineer who previously worked on PGP and for Apple.
The team hit the ground running last October with the introduction of its first product, an easy-to-use, surveillance-resistant communications platform that could be employed on an iPhone or iPad to encrypt mobile communications—text messages plus voice and video calls.
In order to avoid potential sanctions from Uncle Sam, Silent Circle was incorporated offshore, with an initial network build-out in Canada; it has plans to expand to Switzerland and Hong Kong.
Silent Circle immediately attracted attention from news organizations, nine of which signed on to protect their journalists' and sources' safety in delicate situations. A major multinational corporation ordered some 18,000 subscriptions for its staff. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies in nine countries have expressed interest in using the company to protect the communications of their own employees.
As Ryan Gallagher wrote in Slate:
"The technology uses a sophisticated peer-to-peer encryption technique that allows users to send encrypted files of up to 60 megabytes through a 'Silent Text' app. The sender of the file can set it on a timer so that it will automatically 'burn'—deleting it from both devices after a set period of, say, seven minutes. Until now, sending encrypted documents has been frustratingly difficult for anyone who isn't a sophisticated technology user, requiring knowledge of how to use and install various kinds of specialist software. What Silent Circle has done is to remove these hurdles, essentially democratizing encryption. It's a game-changer that will almost certainly make life easier and safer for journalists, dissidents, diplomats, and companies trying to evade state surveillance or corporate espionage."
The burn feature is extraordinarily valuable. It can mean the difference between life and death for someone who uses a phone to film an atrocity in a danger zone and transmits it to a safe remote location. Seven minutes later, it disappears from the source, even if the phone is seized and its contents examined.
Additionally, Silent Circle "doesn't retain metadata (such as times and dates calls are made using Silent Circle), and IP server logs showing who is visiting the Silent Circle website are currently held for only seven days. The same privacy-by-design approach will be adopted to protect the security of users' encrypted files. When a user sends a picture or document, it will be encrypted, digitally 'shredded' into thousands of pieces, and temporarily stored in a 'Secure Cloud Broker' until it is transmitted to the recipient. Silent Circle ... has no way of accessing the encrypted files because the 'key' to open them is held on the users' devices and then deleted after it has been used to open the files."
The Silent Suite, a subscription to which costs US $20/month, covers the communications spectrum with four features:
Silent Phone works on iPhone, iPad, Android, Galaxy, and Nexus, and provides encrypted, P2P, HD mobile voice and video over 3G, 4G, Edge, and WiFi, "with almost no latency" and no possibility of anyone (including the company) listening or wiretapping. The cryptographic keys involved are destroyed at the end of the call.
Silent Text allows the user to send P2P encrypted material—business documents (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Pages, Keynote, PDFs, CAD drawings, etc.), any file, any movie, any picture, map locations, URLs, calendar invites—and then delete them with its "Burn Notice" feature.
Silent Eyes allows for encrypted HD video and voice transmission using a laptop or desktop device. It's compatible with all Windows operating systems.
Silent Mail encrypts email with PGP Universal. It will run on smartphones, tablets, and computers using existing mail programs such as Outlook and Mac Mail. Absolute privacy is ensured with a silentmail.com email address and 1 Gb of encrypted storage.
This is not intended as an endorsement of Silent Circle, although we heartily approve of what the company is trying to do, and the other above references by no means represent an exhaustive guide to securing your communications. But they will point you in the right direction and perhaps spur you to action. A basic search will turn up dozens more options. Carefully study what each offers, read reviews from sources you trust, determine the service best suited to your particular needs, then just sign up.
However, we all have to accept the cold, hard fact of the matter, which is that this cat-and-mouse game is likely to be with us for a very long time. Those who believe they have the right to spy on us will develop ever more sophisticated ways of doing it. Those who believe we have a Constitutional right to privacy will fight tooth and nail to protect it.
It's possible that the one side eventually will develop an unstoppable offense or that the other will come up with a defense that can't be breached. But that's not the way to bet.
In the end, technology is completely neutral. It will evolve with no regard to how it is used. Expect those cats and mice to continue chasing each other, around and around and around. And make do with the best that is available to you at any given time.
-
http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/05/nevada-family-says-police-occupation-vio
From the article:
You don't often hear about lawsuits based on the Third Amendment, the one that says "no soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war but in a manner to be prescribed by law." That usually overlooked provision is cited in a federal lawsuit recently filed by Anthony Mitchell and his parents, Michael and Linda Mitchell—an oddity for which we can thank the Henderson, Nevada, police department.
-
Far out.
-
Secret Court's Redefinition of 'Relevant' Empowered Vast NSA Data-Gathering
By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES and SIOBHAN GORMAN
WSJ
The National Security Agency's ability to gather phone data on millions of Americans hinges on a secret court ruling that redefined a single word: "relevant."
The National Security Agency’s ability to gather phone data on millions of Americans hinges on the secret redefinition of the word “relevant.” Jen Valentino-DeVries reports. Photo: Getty Images.
This change—which specifically enabled the surveillance recently revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden—was made by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a group of judges responsible for making decisions about government surveillance in national-security cases. In classified orders starting in the mid-2000s, the court accepted that "relevant" could be broadened to permit an entire database of records on millions of people, in contrast to a more conservative interpretation widely applied in criminal cases, in which only some of those records would likely be allowed, according to people familiar with the ruling.
The 'relevant' language was added to the Patriot Act when it came up for reauthorization; it was signed by President Bush in 2006.
Related Articles
In interviews with The Wall Street Journal, current and former administration and congressional officials are shedding new light on the history of the NSA program and the secret legal theory underpinning it. The court's interpretation of the word enabled the government, under the Patriot Act, to collect the phone records of the majority of Americans, including phone numbers people dialed and where they were calling from, as part of a continuing investigation into international terrorism.
"Relevant" has long been a broad standard, but the way the court is interpreting it, to mean, in effect, "everything," is new, says Mark Eckenwiler, a senior counsel at Perkins Coie LLP who, until December, was the Justice Department's primary authority on federal criminal surveillance law.
"I think it's a stretch" of previous federal legal interpretations, says Mr. Eckenwiler, who hasn't seen the secret ruling. If a federal attorney "served a grand-jury subpoena for such a broad class of records in a criminal investigation, he or she would be laughed out of court."
Two senators on the Intelligence Committee, Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Mark Udall (D., Colo.), have argued repeatedly that there was a "secret interpretation" of the Patriot Act. The senators' offices tell the Journal that this new interpretation of the word "relevant" is what they meant. An official at FISC, the secret court, declined to comment. The NSA referred questions to the Justice Department, saying this provision of the Patriot Act addressed FBI authorities. The Justice Department didn't comment.
U.S. surveillance programs are under fresh scrutiny after Mr. Snowden, the former NSA contractor, among other things revealed a secret order from the surveillance court directing Verizon Business Services Inc. to turn over "comprehensive communications routing information" to the NSA. Mr. Snowden also revealed a classified draft of a 2009 NSA Inspector General report that provides further details on the phone program and a related one that gathered Internet data. Other large phone companies, including AT&T Inc. T -0.57% and Sprint Nextel Corp., S -2.65% receive similar orders every three months, former officials say.
Under the Patriot Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigation can require businesses to hand over "tangible things," including "records," as long as the FBI shows it is reasonable to believe the things are "relevant to an authorized investigation" into international terrorism or foreign intelligence activities.
The history of the word "relevant" is key to understanding that passage. The Supreme Court in 1991 said things are "relevant" if there is a "reasonable possibility" that they will produce information related to the subject of the investigation. In criminal cases, courts previously have found that very large sets of information didn't meet the relevance standard because significant portions—innocent people's information—wouldn't be pertinent.
But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, FISC, has developed separate precedents, centered on the idea that investigations to prevent national-security threats are different from ordinary criminal cases. The court's rulings on such matters are classified and almost impossible to challenge because of the secret nature of the proceedings. According to the court, the special nature of national-security and terrorism-prevention cases means "relevant" can have a broader meaning for those investigations, say people familiar with the rulings.
The use of computers to look for links in massive data sets also means information previously not considered relevant could today, in fact, be important in some broad investigations, says Paul Rosenzweig, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Department of Homeland Security in the administration of President George W. Bush. "Large databases are effective" for this type of analysis "only to the extent they are actually comprehensive," says Mr. Rosenzweig, founder of homeland-security consultant Red Branch Consulting PLLC.
This explanation echoes recent statements by the Obama administration. "More narrow collection would limit our ability to screen for and identify terrorism-related communications," said James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, in a statement June 6.
People familiar with the system that uses phone records in investigations say that the court's novel legal theories allow the system to include bulk phone records, as long as there are privacy safeguards to limit searches. NSA analysts may query the database only "when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization," according to Mr. Clapper.
The NSA database includes data about people's phone calls—numbers dialed, how long a call lasted—but not the actual conversations. According to Supreme Court rulings, a phone call's content is covered by the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which restricts unreasonable searches, but the other types of data aren't.
The idea that large databases of American activity were needed to prevent terrorism gained steam following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Soon after, the Bush administration began several expanded surveillance efforts.
Amid controversy over the programs starting in 2004, the administration agreed to move domestic Internet data collection under the authority of FISC orders, according to the Inspector General's report revealed by Mr. Snowden. (That Internet data collection program ended in 2011, the NSA has said.) By 2006, the administration looked to move the phone-records program under the court as well, according to the report.
Sen. Ron Wyden has said there was a 'secret interpretation' of the Patriot Act.
In 2005 and early 2006, some lawmakers tried to tighten the Patriot Act when it came up for reauthorization. At that time, the part of the law being used to get phone records required investigators simply to state that records were sought for an authorized investigation into terrorism or foreign intelligence—a lower standard than "relevant." Congress added the word "relevant" to the law, but senators who wanted even stricter standards—which would have ended the ability to collect bulk phone records—failed.
Former Sen. Jon Kyl spoke on the floor of the Senate in favor of the "relevance" standard. "We all know the term 'relevance.' It is a term that every court uses," he said in 2006. "The relevance standard is exactly the standard employed for the issuance of discovery orders in civil litigation, grand jury subpoenas in a criminal investigation," he said.
But a few people cautioned that "relevant" could be defined to the point of irrelevance. "Relevance is a very broad standard that could arguably justify the collection of all kinds of information about law-abiding Americans," former Sen. Russ Feingold said on the Senate floor in February 2006. He argued for stricter wording, and failed.
President Bush signed the Patriot Act reauthorization in March 2006. And the NSA and Justice Department set about persuading the secret court, FISC, that the law allowed them to obtain bulk phone records.
The Bush administration didn't see the argument as a difficult one to make. According to the draft Inspector General's report revealed by Mr. Snowden, the administration had won court approval of the Internet data program two years before, something that made it easier to answer the court's questions. Of the requirement to show "relevance," a former official familiar with the discussions at the time says: "Usually, it's a pretty generous standard."
The court did limit the number of people who could access the data, and it required "more stringent oversight" by the Justice Department, according to the Inspector General's report. But in May 2006, the secret court agreed that, even with the addition of the word "relevant," bulk phone records could also be collected under the law.
The legal interpretations required to make this change were "aggressive," says Timothy Edgar, a former top privacy lawyer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Council in the Bush and Obama administrations. Still, considering that the program previously had less congressional or court oversight, many lawmakers saw this as a step forward, he says.
"It wasn't seen that we're pushing the boundaries of surveillance law here," Mr. Edgar says. "It was the very opposite. You're starting from a huge amount of unilateral surveillance and putting it on a much sounder legal basis."
Some lawmakers now disagree. "The government must request specific records relevant to its investigation," Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.), one of the authors of the Patriot Act, says. "To argue otherwise renders the provision meaningless," he says. "It's like scooping up the entire ocean to guarantee you catch a fish."
Given the traditional legal definition of relevant, Mr. Edgar says, it is "a fair point" to say that someone reading the law might believe it refers to "individualized requests" or "requests in small batches, rather than in bulk database form." From that standpoint, he says, the reinterpretation of relevant amounts to "secret law."
Still, he says, Congress repeatedly had the option to prohibit in legislation the bulk collection of records, and it didn't. Defenders of using the Patriot Act this way make similar arguments. In a statement last month, the chair and ranking minority member on the Senate Intelligence Committee said that both the House and Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees have "been briefed extensively" on this.
Mr. Edgar added, however, that Congress couldn't fully debate the issue because the program wasn't public.
Write to Jennifer Valentino-DeVries at Jennifer.Valentino-DeVries@wsj.com and Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com
-
http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/05/nevada-family-says-police-occupation-vio
From the article:
You don't often hear about lawsuits based on the Third Amendment, the one that says "no soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war but in a manner to be prescribed by law." That usually overlooked provision is cited in a federal lawsuit recently filed by Anthony Mitchell and his parents, Michael and Linda Mitchell—an oddity for which we can thank the Henderson, Nevada, police department.
I doubt the 3rd. applies here, but there are state and federal laws that apply if the claims made are indeed accurate.
-
Maybe via the emanations and penumbras of the Third? :lol:
-
Maybe via the emanations and penumbras of the Third? :lol:
More like:
NRS 199.120 Definition; penalties. A person, having taken a lawful oath or made affirmation in a judicial proceeding or in any other matter where, by law, an oath or affirmation is required and no other penalty is prescribed, who:
1. Willfully makes an unqualified statement of that which the person does not know to be true;
2. Swears or affirms willfully and falsely in a matter material to the issue or point in question;
3. Suborns any other person to make such an unqualified statement or to swear or affirm in such a manner;
4. Executes an affidavit pursuant to NRS 15.010 which contains a false statement, or suborns any other person to do so; or
5. Executes an affidavit or other instrument which contains a false statement before a person authorized to administer oaths or suborns any other person to do so,
Ê is guilty of perjury or subornation of perjury, as the case may be, which is a category D felony and shall be punished as provided in NRS 193.130.
[1911 C&P § 85; A 1949, 111; 1943 NCL § 10034]—(NRS A 1967, 464; 1977, 640; 1979, 1420; 1985, 129, 788; 1987, 654; 1995, 1174)
NRS 199.125 “Oath” and “swear” defined.
1. The term “oath” shall include an affirmation and every other mode authorized by law of attesting the truth of that which is stated.
2. A person who shall state any matter under oath shall be deemed to “swear” thereto.
[1911 C&P § 88; RL § 6353; NCL § 10037]—(Substituted in revision for NRS 199.170)
NRS 199.130 False affidavit or complaint to effect arrest or search.
1. A person who makes, executes or signs or causes to be made, executed or signed, any false or fictitious affidavit, complaint, deposition, or other instrument in writing before any officer or person authorized to administer oaths, for the purpose or with the intent of securing a warrant for the arrest of any other person, or for the purpose of securing a warrant for the searching of the premises, goods, chattels or effects, or of seizing the goods, chattels or effects, or of seizing anything in the possession of any other person, is guilty of perjury which is a category D felony.
2. A person who commits any of the acts or offenses defined or set out in subsection 1 shall be punished as provided in NRS 193.130.
[1:10:1925; NCL § 10526] + [3:10:1925; NCL § 10528]—(NRS A 1967, 464; 1979, 1420; 1995, 1174)
-
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/what-gmail-knows-about-you/277578/
-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data
-
The NSA's Surveillance Is Unconstitutional
Congress or the courts should put a stop to these unreasonable data seizures.
By RANDY E. BARNETT
Due largely to unauthorized leaks, we now know that the National Security Agency has seized from private companies voluminous data on the phone and Internet usage of all U.S. citizens. We've also learned that the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has approved the constitutionality of these seizures in secret proceedings in which only the government appears, and in opinions kept secret even from the private companies from whom the data are seized.
If this weren't disturbing enough, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform, is compiling a massive database of citizens' personal information—including monthly credit-card, mortgage, car and other payments—ostensibly to protect consumers from abuses by financial institutions.
The new National Security Agency (NSA) Utah Data Center facility is seen under construction in Bluffdale, Utah.
All of this dangerously violates the most fundamental principles of our republican form of government. The Fourth Amendment has two parts: First, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." Second, that "no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
By banning unreasonable "seizures" of a person's "papers," the Fourth Amendment clearly protects what we today call "informational privacy." Rather than seizing the private papers of individual citizens, the NSA and CFPB programs instead seize the records of the private communications companies with which citizens do business under contractual "terms of service." These contracts do not authorize data-sharing with the government. Indeed, these private companies have insisted that they be compelled by statute and warrant to produce their records so as not to be accused of breaching their contracts and willingly betraying their customers' trust.
As other legal scholars, most notably Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar, have pointed out, when the Fourth Amendment was ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, government agents were liable for damages in civil tort actions for trespass. The Seventh Amendment preserved the right to have a jury composed of ordinary citizens pass upon the "reasonableness" of any searches or seizures. Because judges were not trusted to jealously guard the liberties of the people, the Fourth Amendment restricted the issuance of warrants to the heightened requirements of "probable cause" and specificity.
Over time, as law-enforcement agents were granted qualified immunity from civil suits, it fell mainly to judges to assess the "reasonableness" of a government search or seizure during a criminal prosecution, thereby undermining the original republican scheme of holding law enforcement accountable to citizen juries.
True, judges have long been approving search warrants by relying on ex parte affidavits from law enforcement. With the NSA's surveillance program, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has apparently secretly approved the blanket seizure of data on every American so this "metadata" can later provide the probable cause for a particular search. Such indiscriminate data seizures are the epitome of "unreasonable," akin to the "general warrants" issued by the Crown to authorize searches of Colonial Americans.
Still worse, the way these programs have been approved violates the Fifth Amendment, which stipulates that no one may be deprived of property "without due process of law." Secret judicial proceedings adjudicating the rights of private parties, without any ability to participate or even read the legal opinions of the judges, is the antithesis of the due process of law.
In a republican government based on popular sovereignty, the people are the principals or masters and those in government are merely their agents or servants. For the people to control their servants, however, they must know what their servants are doing.
The secrecy of these programs makes it impossible to hold elected officials and appointed bureaucrats accountable. Relying solely on internal governmental checks violates the fundamental constitutional principle that the sovereign people must be the ultimate external judge of their servants' conduct in office. Yet such judgment and control is impossible without the information that such secret programs conceal. Had it not been for recent leaks, the American public would have no idea of the existence of these programs, and we still cannot be certain of their scope.
Even if these blanket data-seizure programs are perfectly proper now, the technical capability they create makes it far easier for government to violate the rights of the people in the future. Consider why gun rights advocates so vociferously oppose gun registration. By providing the government with information about the location of private arms, gun registries make it feasible for gun confiscation to take place in the future when the political and legal climate may have shifted. The only effective way to prevent the confiscation of firearms tomorrow is to deprive authorities of the means to do so today.
Like gun registries, these NSA and CFPB databanks make it feasible for government workers to peruse the private contents of our electronic communication and financial transactions without our knowledge or consent. All it takes is the will, combined with the right political climate.
Congress or the courts must put a stop to these unreasonable blanket seizures of data and end the jurisdiction of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to secretly adjudicate the constitutionality of surveillance programs. Both practices constitute a present danger to popular sovereignty and the rights retained by the people.
Mr. Barnett is a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University and the author of "Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty" (Princeton University, 2005).
-
Exactly so!
It is both discouraging and indicative of certain mindset that there are a number of departments that have been arresting and prosecuting citizens for this.
http://chiefweems.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/recording-police-activity-and-identification-issues/
Recording Police Activity and Identification Issues
Posted: July 8, 2013 in General Information, Police-Citizen Contacts
Two areas in which my brethren are constantly creating self inflicted trouble is the complete misunderstanding or willful ignorance of the laws concerning the recording of police activity as well as the laws concerning whether or not a citizen must provide identification.
Before I jump into these two issues, I want to point out that in my experience, video clears more peace officers of false accusations than it catches those committing malevolent acts. However, the former simply don’t make it to the all knowing interweb. Often, complaints evaporate once the complainant is invited to come watch the video.
I also want to point out that I understand the divided attention dilemma for peace officers. It is difficult enough to conduct business and be observant of one’s surroundings. Having one’s attention divided even more by having another person interjected into the mix doesn’t make things easier, but use their camera as plus for you. Let it catch you doing things the right way instead of doing something that makes you the next big YouTube star.
The Issue of Videoing Police Activity
It is perfectly legal for a citizen to record police activity. This issue has been addressed recently by two federal appeals court circuits, both circuits upheld the practice as protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court refused to take either of the cases on appeal thus letting stand the rulings of the lower courts.
The first of these cases comes out of Massachusetts (2011) in which police arrested an individual who was videoing them while they arrested a suspect. His cell phone was also seized. The police based their charges on a state law concerning wiretapping. The criminal charges were dismissed, and the individual filed a lawsuit. The court framed the issue as a First Amendment issue and ruled in the favor of the citizen. Former Providence, Rhode Island, Police Captain Jack Ryan, who is also an attorney, summarized the case here.
The second case comes out of Illinois (2012) where the state legislature specifically made it a crime to record police activity. This law was challenged, and the court struck it down on First Amendment grounds.
The courts are clear on this issue. There is no ambiguity on the matter. My message to my brethren is also simple: unless a person is materially interfering while videoing, simply leave them alone. If you are worried about what the video will capture, the issue is with you and not the person taking the video. Don’t take the bait.
Demanding Identification
There is no law in Georgia that allows a peace officer carte blanche authority to compel a person to provide identification. Whats-more, there is no law requiring a person to even obtain or possess identification in general. Requirements for identification are linked to specific activities, and persons not engaged in those activities need not possess identification. For instance, the requirement for an individual to have a driver’s license only applies if a person is operating a vehicle that requires a license to operate it in the first place and the vehicle is being operated in a location for which the operator must be licensed to do so.
What I mean by no carte blanche is that officers simply cannot demand identity from a person and then arrest that person for failure to comply. Remember that any seizure of a person requires at minimum reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime (see above link on police-citizen contacts), and using a show of authority to compel identification is a seizure. If the person (and/or their stuff) is not free to go then the person (and/or their stuff) is seized. If, for instance, a peace officer approaches a citizen and demands identification while telling the individual they are not free to leave, and then said peace officer takes away the individual’s cell phone, both the person and their property have been seized under the Fourth Amendment. Needless to say, attempting to delete a video from the phone is not a good idea.
In Conclusion
It is perfectly legal to ask someone for their identification for any or no reason. However, once the show of authority is made, being able to articulate specific facts when taken together as a whole indicate that a person is involved in criminal activity is a must on the part of the officer. Merely being “suspicious” is not enough.
-
http://www.reagancoalition.com/articles/2013/20130718005-distract-obama-eo.html
-
You (and Your Cellphone) on Candid Camera
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: July 18, 2013
Anybody who shops at online stores like Amazon.com knows that those merchants track customers, what they look at, what they buy and how long they spend on the site. Perhaps it’s not all that surprising that traditional retailers — with little or no notice — have started tracking shoppers in stores, using security cameras and devices that can monitor the location of customer cellphones.
Related
In this era of big data and cheap monitoring equipment and software, national chains like Family Dollar and even neighborhood cafes are using tracking technologies to offer coupons to customers and gather information about their in-store shopping habits, according to a recent article in The Times. Retailers say they need to monitor customers so they can help them find what they want. If you linger in the men’s formal wear section, for instance, a store might send you a coupon that offers you a free shirt with the purchase of a new suit.
Retailers also argue that they collect no more, and often a lot less, information about their customers than Web merchants do. The Federal Trade Commission says it has not found evidence that retailers are using facial recognition technology that could allow them to identify and build profiles of customers. But what’s disturbing about these tracking methods is that stores are mostly doing so without informing their customers.
The technology that allows stores to track shoppers’ cellphones, for instance, works even when customers do not log on to the Wi-Fi networks of stores. The only way a cellphone user can avoid being tracked is to turn off the Wi-Fi feature on their phones, which few are likely to do if they are unaware of the monitoring in the first place. While a few retailers like Nordstrom have posted signs telling customers that they were being monitored in this way, many others do not do so. (Nordstrom stopped tracking cellphones in May, partly as a result of complaints from customers.)
If stores want to track their customers, they should tell the public what they are doing and give people the ability to opt out of monitoring. Many shoppers say they are willing to give information about themselves in exchange for special deals and promotions. But some consumers go to physical stores because they want to protect their privacy. Traditional retailers would be smart not to alienate customers by surreptitiously tracking them.
Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »
-
New Jersey Supreme Court Restricts Police Searches of Phone Data
By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: July 18, 2013 77 Comments
Staking out new ground in the noisy debate about technology and privacy in law enforcement, the New Jersey Supreme Court on Thursday ordered that the police will now have to get a search warrant before obtaining tracking information from cellphone providers.
Related
The ruling puts the state at the forefront of efforts to define the boundaries around a law enforcement practice that a national survey last year showed was routine, and typically done without court oversight or public awareness. With lower courts divided on the use of cellphone tracking data, legal experts say, the issue is likely to end up before the United States Supreme Court.
The New Jersey decision also underscores the extent of the battles over government intrusion into personal data in a quickly advancing digital age, from small town police departments to the National Security Agency’s surveillance of e-mail and cellphone conversations.
Several states and Congress are considering legislation to require that warrants based on probable cause be obtained before investigators can get cellphone data. Montana recently became the first state to pass such a measure into law. The California Legislature approved a similar bill in 2012, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it, saying it did not “strike the right balance” between the needs of law enforcement and the rights of citizens.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled in May that the police could seize a cellphone without a warrant, but needed a warrant to search it. And a case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., is weighing whether investigators acted legally when they got a court order, but not a warrant, to obtain 221 days of cellphone location data for suspects in an armed robbery case in Maryland.
“This type of issue will play out in many jurisdictions for the simple reason that cellphones are so prevalent in daily life,” said Peter G. Verniero, a former New Jersey attorney general and State Supreme Court justice. “The decision affects just about everybody.”
“Law enforcement is trying to keep up with technology, as well they should,” he added. “It’s very legitimate for law enforcement to use technology, but this court decision is a strong reminder that constitutional standards still apply. The courts have to adapt, and law enforcement has to adapt.”
The ruling involved a case that began with a string of burglaries in homes in Middletown, N.J. A court ordered the tracing of a cellphone that had been stolen from one home, which led to a man in a bar in nearby Asbury Park, who said his cousin had sold him the phone, and had been involved in burglaries. The police then used data they got from T-Mobile to locate the suspect, Thomas W. Earls, at three points on a subsequent evening, tracking him to a motel room where he was found with a television and suitcases full of stolen goods.
In a unanimous decision, the State Supreme Court said that when people entered cellphone contracts, “they can reasonably expect that their personal information will remain private.”
The justices recognized that this departed somewhat from federal case law. But they relied in part on a United States Supreme Court decision last year that the police could not attach a Global Positioning System to a suspect’s car without a warrant. A cellphone, the New Jersey justices said, was like a GPS device.
“Using a cellphone to determine the location of its owner can be far more revealing than acquiring toll billing, bank, or Internet subscriber records,” said the opinion, written by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. “Details about the location of a cellphone can provide an intimate picture of one’s daily life and reveal not just where people go — which doctors, religious services and stores they visit — but also the people and groups they choose to affiliate with. That information cuts across a broad range of personal ties with family, friends, political groups, health care providers and others.”
Besides establishing a firmer legal bar for the police to obtain cellphone data, the Supreme Court also remanded the case to the appeals court to determine whether the evidence collected using the cellphone records could be admitted in court under an “emergency aid exception” to the requirement for a warrant.
Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union reviewed records from more than 200 local police departments, large and small, and found that they were aggressively using cellphone tracking data, so much so that some cellphone companies were marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments, to track suspects or even to download text messages sent to a phone that had been turned off. Departments were using the information for emergency and nonemergency cases.
Some departments had manuals advising officers not to reveal the practice to the public. Others defended its use. The police in Grand Rapids, Mich., for example, had used a cellphone locator to find a stabbing victim who was in a basement hiding from his attacker.
The law has been slow to keep up. The Florida decision in May rejected the reasoning of a lower court that had based its approval of cellphone tracking on a 1973 United States Supreme Court case that allowed heroin found in a suspect’s cigarette pack to be introduced as evidence. “Attempting to correlate a crumpled package of cigarettes to the cellphones of today is like comparing a one-cell organism to a human being,” the decision said.
Nationally, court decisions about cellphone tracking have considered whether it comports with the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. But the justices in New Jersey based their decision on the State Constitution, which affords greater privacy protection. The state court has previously ruled in favor of electronic privacy. In 2008, it said that police had to obtain a subpoena from a grand jury to obtain Internet provider records.
“The inescapable logic of this decision should be influential beyond New Jersey because it makes complete sense as to an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy,” said Rubin Sinins, who filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union and the New Jersey Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
-
Don’t Track Us
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: July 20, 2013
It’s hardly a secret that Amazon, Facebook and Google monitor what their users do online and show them targeted ads based on that data. But many users do not fully appreciate that this is also done by dozens of obscure online advertising networks. These companies place small files known as cookies on the computers and phones of people who visit Web sites that display ads they bought. These cookies allow them to serve up ads for, say, shoes that a consumer looked at on one site even as he moves to other sites. Such tracking is pervasive now, and the data is often put into detailed profiles that can also include information from public records and other sources like cash registers at physical stores.
Privacy advocates and policy makers have long talked about requiring software makers to offer users an easy and effective way to opt out of such stealth monitoring through a setting on their Web browsers. Done right, such a system could be as simple as registering your phone number on the do-not-call list created by the Federal Trade Commission to reduce the scourge of unwanted telemarketing calls.
For the last two years, a group of Internet and advertising businesses and experts has been working on this problem. It is hoping to create a voluntary standard that would be adopted by companies that make Web browsers, the ad networks and Web sites. But advocates for greater privacy and groups representing advertising and marketing companies remain far apart on several important issues, like what constitutes tracking.
One big unresolved issue is what types of information advertising companies would be able to collect under the new standard. Under one proposal, ad networks could still collect data on the kinds of Web sites a user was interested in, but the companies would not be able to easily identify the individual by name and other personal details. Unfortunately, this would create a loophole that could be easily abused, rendering the standard meaningless.
For any do-not-track standard to be effective and credible, it has to be simple and comprehensive. Users who choose not to be tracked should be assured that ad networks are not collecting information about which sites they visit. Online businesses have long argued that do-not-track and other privacy protections would hurt them by reducing advertisers’ ability to target consumers most interested in their products. But there should be ways for companies to advertise their products and services without tracking these people against their will. This month, for example, Twitter said it would send ads to users based on their behavior but would let users opt out of such advertising.
Some makers of Web browsers, like Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla, are responding to consumer demand for greater privacy by building more protections into their software. But ad networks are responding to those protections by finding new ways to monitor people. For example, some networks are using new kinds of tracking cookies that are hard to detect and delete. This arms race benefits no one and leaves consumers more confused and frustrated.
Ultimately, policy makers will have to step in. Voluntary industry standards, if they can be achieved, are a good start, but the best way to ensure privacy is strong federal legislation backed by tough enforcement. European lawmakers are working on a new privacy law with some strong protections and Congress should move in that direction, too.
Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »
-
By JACLYN TROP
Published: July 21, 2013
When Timothy P. Murray crashed his government-issued Ford Crown Victoria in 2011, he was fortunate, as car accidents go. Mr. Murray, then the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, was not seriously hurt, and he told the police he was wearing a seat belt and was not speeding.
Within the programming of the air bag control module is the capability to store crash data on an event data recorder.
But a different story soon emerged. Mr. Murray was driving over 100 miles an hour and was not wearing a seat belt, according to the computer in his car that tracks certain actions. He was given a $555 ticket; he later said he had fallen asleep.
The case put Mr. Murray at the center of a growing debate over a little-known but increasingly important piece of equipment buried deep inside a car: the event data recorder, more commonly known as the black box.
About 96 percent of all new vehicles sold in the United States have the boxes, and in September 2014, if the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has its way, all will have them.
The boxes have long been used by car companies to assess the performance of their vehicles. But data stored in the devices is increasingly being used to identify safety problems in cars and as evidence in traffic accidents and criminal cases. And the trove of data inside the boxes has raised privacy concerns, including questions about who owns the information, and what it can be used for, even as critics have raised questions about its reliability.
To federal regulators, law enforcement authorities and insurance companies, the data is an indispensable tool to investigate crashes.
The black boxes “provide critical safety information that might not otherwise be available to N.H.T.S.A. to evaluate what happened during a crash — and what future steps could be taken to save lives and prevent injuries,” David L. Strickland, the safety agency’s administrator, said in a statement.
But to consumer advocates, the data is only the latest example of governments and companies having too much access to private information. Once gathered, they say, the data can be used against car owners, to find fault in accidents or in criminal investigations.
“These cars are equipped with computers that collect massive amounts of data,” said Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based consumer group. “Without protections, it can lead to all kinds of abuse.”
What’s more, consumer advocates say, government officials have yet to provide consistent guidelines on how the data should be used.
“There are no clear standards that say, this is a permissible use of the data and this is not,” Ms. Barnes said.
Fourteen states, including New York, have passed laws that say that, even though the data belongs to the vehicle’s owner, law enforcement officials and those involved in civil litigation can gain access to the black boxes with a court order.
In these states, lawyers may subpoena the data for criminal investigations and civil lawsuits, making the information accessible to third parties, including law enforcement or insurance companies that could cancel a driver’s policy or raise a driver’s premium based on the recorder’s data.
In Mr. Murray’s case, a court order was not required to release the data to investigators. Massachusetts is not among the states to pass a law governing access to the data. Asked about the case, Mr. Murray, who did not contest the ticket and who resigned as lieutenant governor in June to become head of the Chamber of Commerce in Worcester, Mass., declined to comment.
Current regulations require that the presence of the black box be disclosed in the owner’s manual. But the vast majority of drivers who do not read the manual thoroughly may not know that their vehicle can capture and record their speed, brake position, seat belt use and other data each time they get behind the wheel.
Unlike the black boxes on airplanes, which continually record data including audio and system performance, the cars’ recorders capture only the few seconds surrounding a crash or air bag deployment. A separate device extracts the data, which is then analyzed through computer software.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a Washington-based trade association that represents 12 automakers including General Motors and Chrysler, said it supported the mandate because the recorders helped to monitor passenger safety.
“Event data recorders help our engineers and researchers understand how cars perform in the real world, and one of our priorities for E.D.R.’s continues to be preserving consumer privacy,” said Wade Newton, a spokesman for the trade association. “Automakers don’t access E.D.R. data without consumer permission, and we believe that any government requirements to install E.D.R.’s on all vehicles must include steps to protect consumer privacy.”
Beyond the privacy concerns, though, critics have questioned the data’s reliability.
In 2009, Anthony Niemeyer died after crashing a rented Ford Focus in Las Vegas. His widow, Kathryn, sued both Ford Motor and Hertz, contending that the air bag system failed to deploy.
The black box, however, derailed Ms. Niemeyer’s assertion that her husband had been traveling fast enough for the air bag to deploy.
=========================
(Page 2 of 2)
Though Ms. Niemeyer lost the suit last year, her lawyer, Daniel T. Ryan of St. Louis, was successful in excluding the black box data as evidence on the grounds that the device is not fully reliable. The judge in the case ruled that because an engineer working on behalf of the defense retrieved the data, the plaintiffs, who maintained there were errors, had no way to independently verify it.
“It’s data that has not been shown to be absolutely reliable,” Mr. Ryan said. “It’s not black and white.”
The origins of black boxes, which are the size of about two decks of cards and are situated under the center console, date to the 1990 model year, when General Motors introduced them to conduct quality studies. Since then, their use and the scope of the data they collect has expanded.
The lack of standardization among manufacturers has made it difficult to extract the data, most notably during the investigations into the crashes caused by sudden, unintended acceleration in some Toyota vehicles.
Until recently, crash investigators needed an automaker’s proprietary reader as well as the expertise to analyze the data. The safety administration’s regulations will help enable universal access to the data by using a commercially available tool. At the same time, police departments are receiving training on the new regulations. In Romulus, N.Y., last week, the Collision Safety Institute, a consultancy in San Diego, helped teach New York State Police investigators how to read the devices.
But privacy advocates have expressed concern that the data collected will only grow to include a wider time frame and other elements like GPS and location-based services.
“The rabbit hole goes very deep when talking about this stuff,” said Thomas Kowalick, an expert in event data recorders and a former co-chairman of the federal committee that set the standard for black boxes.
Today, the boxes have spawned a cottage industry for YouTube videos on how to expunge the data. And Mr. Kowalick, seeing an opportunity, invented a device that safeguards access to in-vehicle electronics networks. It is controlled by the vehicle’s owner with a key and is useful in the event of theft, he said.
“For most of the 100-year history of the car, it used to be ‘he said, she said,’ ” Mr. Kowalick said. “That’s no longer going to be the way.”
-
--US Justice Dept. Says NSA Snooping Does Not Violate Constitutional Rights (July 19, 2013)
The US government has responded to a series of lawsuits challenging the NSA's authority to snoop on phone records, saying that the intelligence agency's activity cannot be challenged in court.
The Obama administration maintains that the actions do not violate citizens' constitutional rights and are conducted in the "public interest."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/spygate-snooping-standing/
US DOJ Filing:
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2013/07/nsaacluresponse.pdf
-
If you think the black box is scary, look at this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/07/24/hackers-reveal-nasty-new-car-attacks-with-me-behind-the-wheel-video/
From the article:
As I drove their vehicles for more than an hour, Miller and Valasek showed that they’ve reverse-engineered enough of the software of the Escape and the Toyota Prius (both the 2010 model) to demonstrate a range of nasty surprises: everything from annoyances like uncontrollably blasting the horn to serious hazards like slamming on the Prius’ brakes at high speeds. They sent commands from their laptops that killed power steering, spoofed the GPS and made pathological liars out of speedometers and odometers. Finally they directed me out to a country road, where Valasek showed that he could violently jerk the Prius’ steering at any speed, threatening to send us into a cornfield or a head-on collision. “Imagine you’re driving down a highway at 80 ,” Valasek says. “You’re going into the car next to you or into oncoming traffic. That’s going to be bad times.”
-
http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/31/yes-that-is-a-spy-in-your-pocket-federal
-
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/01/nsa-program-reportedly-allows-analysts-to-track-emails-chats-web-searches/
-
FBI Taps Hacker Tactics to Spy on Suspects
Law-Enforcement Officials Expand Use of Tools Such as Spyware as People Under Investigation 'Go Dark,' Evading Wiretaps
By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES and DANNY YADRON
Law-enforcement officials in the U.S. are expanding the use of tools routinely used by computer hackers to gather information on suspects, bringing the criminal wiretap into the cyber age.
Federal agencies have largely kept quiet about these capabilities, but court documents and interviews with people involved in the programs provide new details about the hacking tools, including spyware delivered to computers and phones through email or Web links—techniques more commonly associated with attacks by criminals.
People familiar with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's programs say that the use of hacking tools under court orders has grown as agents seek to keep up with suspects who use new communications technology, including some types of online chat and encryption tools. The use of such communications, which can't be wiretapped like a phone, is called "going dark" among law enforcement.
A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment.
The FBI develops some hacking tools internally and purchases others from the private sector. With such technology, the bureau can remotely activate the microphones in phones running Google Inc.'s GOOG +0.26% Android software to record conversations, one former U.S. official said. It can do the same to microphones in laptops without the user knowing, the person said. Google declined to comment.
The bureau typically uses hacking in cases involving organized crime, child pornography or counterterrorism, a former U.S. official said. It is loath to use these tools when investigating hackers, out of fear the suspect will discover and publicize the technique, the person said.
The FBI has been developing hacking tools for more than a decade, but rarely discloses its techniques publicly in legal cases.
Related
Digits: How the FBI Hacks Criminal Suspects
Earlier this year, a federal warrant application in a Texas identity-theft case sought to use software to extract files and covertly take photos using a computer's camera, according to court documents. The judge denied the application, saying, among other things, that he wanted more information on how data collected from the computer would be minimized to remove information on innocent people.
Since at least 2005, the FBI has been using "web bugs" that can gather a computer's Internet address, lists of programs running and other data, according to documents disclosed in 2011. The FBI used that type of tool in 2007 to trace a person who was eventually convicted of emailing bomb threats in Washington state, for example.
The FBI "hires people who have hacking skill, and they purchase tools that are capable of doing these things," said a former official in the agency's cyber division. The tools are used when other surveillance methods won't work: "When you do, it's because you don't have any other choice," the official said.
Surveillance technologies are coming under increased scrutiny after disclosures about data collection by the National Security Agency. The NSA gathers bulk data on millions of Americans, but former U.S. officials say law-enforcement hacking is targeted at very specific cases and used sparingly.
Still, civil-liberties advocates say there should be clear legal guidelines to ensure hacking tools aren't misused. "People should understand that local cops are going to be hacking into surveillance targets," said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. "We should have a debate about that."
Mr. Soghoian, who is presenting on the topic Friday at the DefCon hacking conference in Las Vegas, said information about the practice is slipping out as a small industry has emerged to sell hacking tools to law enforcement. He has found posts and resumes on social networks in which people discuss their work at private companies helping the FBI with surveillance.
A search warrant would be required to get content such as files from a suspect's computer, said Mark Eckenwiler, a senior counsel at Perkins Coie LLP who until December was the Justice Department's primary authority on federal criminal surveillance law. Continuing surveillance would necessitate an even stricter standard, the kind used to grant wiretaps.
But if the software gathers only communications-routing "metadata"—like Internet protocol addresses or the "to" and "from" lines in emails—a court order under a lower standard might suffice if the program is delivered remotely, such as through an Internet link, he said. That is because nobody is physically touching the suspect's property, he added.
An official at the Justice Department said it determines what legal authority to seek for such surveillance "on a case-by-case basis." But the official added that the department's approach is exemplified by the 2007 Washington bomb-threat case, in which the government sought a warrant even though no agents touched the computer and the spyware gathered only metadata.
In 2001, the FBI faced criticism from civil-liberties advocates for declining to disclose how it installed a program to record the keystrokes on the computer of mobster Nicodemo Scarfo Jr. to capture a password he was using to encrypt a document. He was eventually convicted.
A group at the FBI called the Remote Operations Unit takes a leading role in the bureau's hacking efforts, according to former officials.
Officers often install surveillance tools on computers remotely, using a document or link that loads software when the person clicks or views it. In some cases, the government has secretly gained physical access to suspects' machines and installed malicious software using a thumb drive, a former U.S. official said.
The bureau has controls to ensure only "relevant data" are scooped up, the person said. A screening team goes through all of the data pulled from the hack to determine what is relevant, then hands off that material to the case team and stops working on the case.
The FBI employs a number of hackers who write custom surveillance software, and also buys software from the private sector, former U.S. officials said.
Italian company HackingTeam SRL opened a sales office in Annapolis, Md., more than a year ago to target North and South America. HackingTeam provides software that can extract information from phones and computers and send it back to a monitoring system. The company declined to disclose its clients or say whether any are in the U.S.
U.K.-based Gamma International offers computer exploits, which take advantage of holes in software to deliver spying tools, according to people familiar with the company. Gamma has marketed "0 day exploits"—meaning that the software maker doesn't yet know about the security hole—for software including Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, those people said. Gamma, which has marketed its products in the U.S., didn't respond to requests for comment, nor did Microsoft.
Write to Jennifer Valentino-DeVries at Jennifer.Valentino-DeVries@wsj.com and Danny Yadron at danny.yadron@wsj.com
-
Why Christie Is Wrong
Tags
Chris Christie
National Security Agency
Peggy Noonan
I can’t shake my dismay at Gov. Chris Christie’s comments, 12 days ago, on those who question and challenge what we know or think we do of the American national security state.
Speaking at an Aspen Institute gathering attended by major Republican Party donors, a venue at which you really don’t want to make news, Christie jumped at the chance to speak on the tension between civil liberties and government surveillance. He apparently doesn’t see any tension.
Christie doesn’t like seeing the nature and extent of government surveillance being questioned or doubted. He doesn’t like “this strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now.” In fact, it reflects “a very dangerous thought.” He said: “These esoteric, intellectual debates—I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation.” Those who challenge surveillance programs may come to regret it: “The next attack that comes, that kills thousands of Americans as a result, people are going to be looking back on the people having this intellectual debate and wondering whether they put—” Here, according to Jonathan Martin’s report in the New York Times, Christie cut himself off.
The audience—again, including GOP moneymen, at the tony Aspen Institute—was, according to Martin, enthralled. They loved it.
Libertarians and many others did not. I did not.
Stipulated: Christie was speaking off the cuff, not in a prepared address that had been thought through but in Q&A in front of a supportive audience. Politicians can get goosey in circumstances like that.
But Christie seized on the topic, as Martin noted, addressed it colorfully and bluntly, and knew what he thought. And in the days since he hasn’t walked it back.
So you have to take seriously what he said.
To call growing concerns about the size, depth, history, ways and operations of our now-huge national-security operation “esoteric” or merely abstract is, simply, absurd. Our federal government is involved in massive data collection that apparently includes a database of almost every phone call made in the U.S. The adequacy of oversight for this system is at best unclear. The courts involved are shadowed in secrecy and controversy. Is it really wrong or foolhardy or unacceptably thoughtful to wonder if the surveillance apparatus is excessive, or will be abused, or will erode, or perhaps in time end, any expectation of communications privacy held by honest citizens?
It is not. These are right and appropriate concerns, very American ones.
Consider just two stories from the past few days. The Wall Street Journal’s Jennifer Valentino-Devries and Danny Yadron had a stunning piece Friday that touches on the technological aspect of what our government can now do. The FBI is able to remotely activate microphone on phones running Android software. They can now record conversations in this way. They can do the same with microphones in laptops. They can get to you in a lot of ways! Does this make you nervous? If not, why not?
Reuters has a piece just today reporting that data gathered by the National Security Agency has been shared with the Drug Enforcement Administration. The agency that is supposed to be in charge of counterterrorism is sharing data with an agency working in the area of domestic criminal investigations.
Luckily Lois Lerner is on leave, so the IRS isn’t involved yet.
The concerns of normal Americans about the new world we’re entering—the world where Big Brother seems inexorably to be coming to life and we are all, at least potentially Winston Smith—is not only legitimate, it is wise and historically grounded.
And these concerns are not confined to a group of abstract intellectuals debating how many pixels can dance on the head of a pin. Gallup in June had a majority of Americans, 53%, disapproving of NSA surveillance programs, with only 37% approving of the NSA’s efforts to “compile telephone call logs and Internet communications.” And the poll found the most intense opposition to the programs coming from Republicans, who disapproved by almost 2 to 1.
Rasmussen, at roughly the same time, asked the following question: “The government has been secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Americans for national security purposes regardless of whether there is any suspicion of wrongdoing. Do you favor or oppose the government’s secret collecting of these phone records?” Fifty-nine percent of respondents opposed the collecting telephone records of individuals not suspected of doing anything wrong.
A Fox News poll had 61% disapproving how the administration “is handling the government’s classified surveillance program that collects the phone and Internet records of U.S. citizens.”
So Christie is wrong that concerns and reservations about surveillance are the province of intellectuals and theorists—they’re not. He’s wrong that their concerns are merely abstract—they’re concrete. Americans don’t want to be listened in to, and they don’t want their emails read by strangers, especially the government. His stand isn’t even politically shrewd—it needlessly offends sincere skeptics and isn’t the position of the majority of his party, I suppose with the exception of big ticket donors in Aspen.
And Christie’s argument wasn’t even…
-
N.S.A. Said to Search Content of Messages to and From U.S.
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: August 8, 2013 126 Comments
•
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country, hunting for people who mention information about foreigners under surveillance, according to intelligence officials.
The N.S.A. is not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas, a practice that government officials have openly acknowledged. It is also casting a far wider net for people who cite information linked to those foreigners, like a little used e-mail address, according to a senior intelligence official.
While it has long been known that the agency conducts extensive computer searches of data it vacuums up overseas, that it is systematically searching — without warrants — through the contents of Americans’ communications that cross the border reveals more about the scale of its secret operations.
It also adds another element to the unfolding debate, provoked by the disclosures of Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, about whether the agency has infringed on Americans’ privacy as it scoops up e-mails and phone data in its quest to ferret out foreign intelligence.
Government officials say the cross-border surveillance was authorized by a 2008 law, the FISA Amendments Act, in which Congress approved eavesdropping on domestic soil without warrants as long as the “target” was a noncitizen abroad. Voice communications are not included in that surveillance, the senior official said.
Asked to comment, Judith A. Emmel, an N.S.A. spokeswoman, did not directly address surveillance of cross-border communications. But she said the agency’s activities were lawful and intended to gather intelligence not about Americans but about “foreign powers and their agents, foreign organizations, foreign persons or international terrorists.”
“In carrying out its signals intelligence mission, N.S.A. collects only what it is explicitly authorized to collect,” she said. “Moreover, the agency’s activities are deployed only in response to requirements for information to protect the country and its interests.”
Hints of the surveillance appeared in a set of rules, leaked by Mr. Snowden, for how the N.S.A. may carry out the 2008 FISA law. One paragraph mentions that the agency “seeks to acquire communications about the target that are not to or from the target.” The pages were posted online by the newspaper The Guardian on June 20, but the telltale paragraph, the only rule marked “Top Secret” amid 18 pages of restrictions, went largely overlooked amid other disclosures.
To conduct the surveillance, the N.S.A. is temporarily copying and then sifting through the contents of what is apparently most e-mails and other text-based communications that cross the border. The senior intelligence official, who, like other former and current government officials, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said the N.S.A. makes a “clone of selected communication links” to gather the communications, but declined to specify details, like the volume of the data that passes through them.
Computer scientists said that it would be difficult to systematically search the contents of the communications without first gathering nearly all cross-border text-based data; fiber-optic networks work by breaking messages into tiny packets that flow at the speed of light over different pathways to their shared destination, so they would need to be captured and reassembled.
The official said that a computer searches the data for the identifying keywords or other “selectors” and stores those that match so that human analysts could later examine them. The remaining communications, the official said, are deleted; the entire process takes “a small number of seconds,” and the system has no ability to perform “retrospective searching.”
The official said the keyword and other terms were “very precise” to minimize the number of innocent American communications that were flagged by the program. At the same time, the official acknowledged that there had been times when changes by telecommunications providers or in the technology had led to inadvertent overcollection. The N.S.A. monitors for these problems, fixes them and reports such incidents to its overseers in the government, the official said.
The disclosure sheds additional light on statements intelligence officials have made recently, reassuring the public that they do not “target” Americans for surveillance without warrants.
Page 2 of 2)
At a House Intelligence Committee oversight hearing in June, for example, a lawmaker pressed the deputy director of the N.S.A., John Inglis, to say whether the agency listened to the phone calls or read the e-mails and text messages of American citizens. Mr. Inglis replied, “We do not target the content of U.S. person communications without a specific warrant anywhere on the earth.”
Timothy Edgar, a former intelligence official in the Bush and Obama administrations, said that the rule concerning collection “about” a person targeted for surveillance rather than directed at that person had provoked significant internal discussion.
“There is an ambiguity in the law about what it means to ‘target’ someone,” Mr. Edgar, now a visiting professor at Brown, said. “You can never intentionally target someone inside the United States. Those are the words we were looking at. We were most concerned about making sure the procedures only target communications that have one party outside the United States.”
The rule they ended up writing, which was secretly approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, says that the N.S.A. must ensure that one of the participants in any conversation that is acquired when it is searching for conversations about a targeted foreigner must be outside the United States, so that the surveillance is technically directed at the foreign end.
Americans’ communications singled out for further analysis are handled in accordance with “minimization” rules to protect privacy approved by the surveillance court. If private information is not relevant to understanding foreign intelligence, it is deleted; if it is relevant, the agency can retain it and disseminate it to other agencies, the rules show.
While the paragraph hinting at the surveillance has attracted little attention, the American Civil Liberties Union did take note of the “about the target” language in a June 21 post analyzing the larger set of rules, arguing that the language could be interpreted as allowing “bulk” collection of international communications, including of those of Americans.
Jameel Jaffer, a senior lawyer at the A.C.L.U., said Wednesday that such “dragnet surveillance will be poisonous to the freedoms of inquiry and association” because people who know that their communications will be searched will change their behavior.
“They’ll hesitate before visiting controversial Web sites, discussing controversial topics or investigating politically sensitive questions,” Mr. Jaffer said. “Individually, these hesitations might appear to be inconsequential, but the accumulation of them over time will change citizens’ relationship to one another and to the government.”
The senior intelligence official argued, however, that it would be inaccurate to portray the N.S.A. as engaging in “bulk collection” of the contents of communications. “ ‘Bulk collection’ is when we collect and retain for some period of time that lets us do retrospective analysis,” the official said. “In this case, we do not do that, so we do not consider this ‘bulk collection.’ ”
Stewart Baker, a former general counsel for the N.S.A., said that such surveillance could be valuable in identifying previously unknown terrorists or spies inside the United States who unwittingly reveal themselves to the agency by discussing a foreign-intelligence “indicator.” He cited a situation in which officials learn that Al Qaeda was planning to use a particular phone number on the day of an attack.
“If someone is sending that number out, chances are they are on the inside of the plot, and I want to find the people who are on the inside of the plot,” he said.
The senior intelligence official said that the “about the target” surveillance had been valuable, but said it was difficult to point to any particular terrorist plot that would have been carried out if the surveillance had not taken place. He said it was one tool among many used to assemble a “mosaic” of information in such investigations. He also pointed out that the surveillance was used for other types of foreign-intelligence collection, not just terrorism, the official said.
There has been no public disclosure of any ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court explaining its legal analysis of the 2008 FISA law and the Fourth Amendment as allowing “about the target” searches of Americans’ cross-border communications. But in 2009, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel signed off on a similar process for searching federal employees’ communications without a warrant to make sure none contain malicious computer code.
That opinion, by Steven G. Bradbury, who led the office in the Bush administration, may echo the still-secret legal analysis. He wrote that because that system, called EINSTEIN 2.0, scanned communications traffic “only for particular malicious computer code” and there was no authorization to acquire the content for unrelated purposes, it “imposes, at worst, a minimal burden upon legitimate privacy rights.”
-
http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/08/08/glenns-idea-for-americas-next-hit-reality-show-will-totally-invade-your-privacy/
-
Obama Proposes Surveillance-Policy Overhaul
President Plans Changes to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
By SIOBHAN GORMAN, CAROL E. LEE and JANET HOOK
In a news conference on Friday, President Barack Obama announced plans to take measures to increase transparency on government surveillance programs. He also said the government is "not interested in spying on ordinary people."
WASHINGTON—In a striking policy shift, President Barack Obama on Friday announced plans to overhaul a secret national security court and pledged to take other measures to disclose more information about secret National Security Agency programs.
The new proposals, which Mr. Obama announced at a news conference, will likely ratchet up a national debate over the balance between the controversial spy programs and Americans' privacy.
He acknowledged that the documents revealed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden had initiated debate on surveillance and privacy issues.
The most significant proposal would restructure the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to provide for an advocate for privacy concerns. Mr. Obama is also seeking unspecified changes to the Patriot Act to increase oversight and place more constraints on the provision that permits government seizure of business records.
The moves, a concession to civil libertarians and critics of government secrecy, come as Mr. Obama was facing intensifying political pressure from his own party and the unauthorized disclosure of another round of classified information about the NSA programs.
The proposals broadly sought to build public confidence in NSA spy efforts, administration officials said, following weeks of criticism of the administration for its use of the extensive surveillance measures revealed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
The two main programs Mr. Snowden revealed that have sparked outrage among lawmakers and civil libertarians are the vast collection on Americans' phone records and a set of court-ordered partnerships with Silicon Valley companies to provide account information for foreign-intelligence investigations.
"Given the history of abuse by governments, it's right to ask questions about surveillance," Mr. Obama said. "It's not enough for me to have confidence in these programs, the American people must have confidence as well."
Given the scale of the phone-data program, he said, he understood concerns about the potential for abuse.
Mr. Obama also sought to tamp town concerns overseas about the government's extensive spying apparatus. "America is not interested in spying on ordinary people," he said.
Mr. Obama's announcement marks a significant about-face on the issue. Just this past June the president defended the program. "I think on balance, we have established a process and a procedure that the American people should feel comfortable about," Mr. Obama said at the time.
The biggest change seeks to restructure the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to provide a privacy advocate. The current court relies on the government making an application to the court and the court deciding whether to approve it.
The court has come under criticism for not only being secret but lacking any formal adversarial process to challenge government-surveillance programs. Critics note that the court received 1,789 applications to conduct electronic surveillance in 2012. The government withdrew one of those applications, and the court didn't reject any of the requests in whole or in part.
Defenders of the process say it includes exchanges between the government and the judges, saying the judges do push back and require changes to programs before they sign off on them.
While the Obama administration had defended the current court structure, administration officials said Friday that new measures were needed to restore public confidence in the court.
Mr. Obama is also seeking unspecified overhauls to the Patriot Act to increase oversight and place more constraints on the provision that permits government seizure of business records. This provision is the basis for the controversial program that collects the phone records of the vast majority of Americans.
In a move to make public more information about how some NSA surveillance programs work, both the Justice Department and NSA are slated to issue new documents to explain the legal underpinnings of surveillance efforts and provide an "operating manual" to put NSA programs in context, senior administration officials said.
NSA will also create a privacy officer post.
Mr. Obama also ordered the Director of National Intelligence to lead an outside review of U.S. surveillance efforts with an interim report due in two months and a final report due at the end of the year. Mr. Obama said the group would focus on how to ensure programs aren't abused and how such programs impact foreign policy.
An early indication of the difficulty ahead came when the spokesman for House Majority Leader John Boehner criticized Mr. Obama for inadequately defending the programs before the president had finished speaking.
"Transparency is important, but we expect the White House to insist that no reform will compromise the operational integrity of the program. That must be the president's red line, and he must enforce it," said his spokesman Brendan Buck. "Our priority should continue to be saving American lives, not saving face."
Mr. Obama's two biggest proposals will require legislation in a Congress that has struggled to complete less controversial bills. In the most potent show of force, the House only narrowly defeated an amendment that called for cutting off funds for the NSA surveillance of phone records. The amendment, by Rep. Justin Amash (R., Mich.) was rejected by a vote of 217-205, with 111 Democrats joining 94 Republicans in support of the measure.
That coalition ranged from libertarian-leaning conservatives like Mr. Amash to old-line liberals such as Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.). But the amendment faced stiff opposition from the intelligence establishment, evidenced by strong lobbying from the leader of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and NSA director Keith Alexander for members to vote against it.
Other lawmakers, including some of the White House's most reliable allies, have called for major changes in its intelligence programs. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) has introduced legislation calling for creating a "special advocate'' to argue in the FISA courts on behalf of the right to keep information private.
The bill was also supported by Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D., Ill.), who said in a recent ABC News interview, "Let's have an advocate for someone standing up for civil liberties to speak up about the privacy of Americans when they make each of these decisions.''
Mr. Obama emerged on the national political scene as a critic of secret government-surveillance programs. He has changed his position on these issues several times since his campaign for U.S. Senate in 2004.
During a 2005 Senate debate over reauthorization of the Patriot Act, Mr. Obama was one of nine senators who signed a letter expressing concern about leaders potentially abusing provisions in the act. He in particular focused on Section 215, which he and the other senators said would allow "fishing expeditions targeting innocent Americans."
White House officials said the president came to Friday's conclusion after a series of discussions with lawmakers and other officials. But the president was facing stiff resistance to his position from members of his own party in Congress.
-
What is privacy? Why should we want to hold onto it? Why is it important, necessary, precious?
Is it just some prissy relic of the pretechnological past?
We talk about this now because of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency revelations, and new fears that we are operating, all of us, within what has become or is becoming a massive surveillance state. They log your calls here, they can listen in, they can read your emails. They keep the data in mammoth machines that contain a huge collection of information about you and yours. This of course is in pursuit of a laudable goal, security in the age of terror.
Is it excessive? It certainly appears to be. Does that matter? Yes. Among other reasons: The end of the expectation that citizens' communications are and will remain private will probably change us as a people, and a country.
***
Among the pertinent definitions of privacy from the Oxford English Dictionary: "freedom from disturbance or intrusion," "intended only for the use of a particular person or persons," belonging to "the property of a particular person." Also: "confidential, not to be disclosed to others." Among others, the OED quotes the playwright Arthur Miller, describing the McCarthy era: "Conscience was no longer a private matter but one of state administration."
Privacy is connected to personhood. It has to do with intimate things—the innards of your head and heart, the workings of your mind—and the boundary between those things and the world outside.
A loss of the expectation of privacy in communications is a loss of something personal and intimate, and it will have broader implications. That is the view of Nat Hentoff, the great journalist and civil libertarian. He is 88 now and on fire on the issue of privacy. "The media has awakened," he told me. "Congress has awakened, to some extent." Both are beginning to realize "that there are particular constitutional liberty rights that [Americans] have that distinguish them from all other people, and one of them is privacy."
Mr. Hentoff sees excessive government surveillance as violative of the Fourth Amendment, which protects "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" and requires that warrants be issued only "upon probable cause . . . particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
But Mr. Hentoff sees the surveillance state as a threat to free speech, too. About a year ago he went up to Harvard to speak to a class. He asked, he recalled: "How many of you realize the connection between what's happening with the Fourth Amendment with the First Amendment?" He told the students that if citizens don't have basic privacies—firm protections against the search and seizure of your private communications, for instance—they will be left feeling "threatened." This will make citizens increasingly concerned "about what they say, and they do, and they think." It will have the effect of constricting freedom of expression. Americans will become careful about what they say that can be misunderstood or misinterpreted, and then too careful about what they say that can be understood. The inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship.
All of a sudden, the room became quiet. "These were bright kids, interested, concerned, but they hadn't made an obvious connection about who we are as a people." We are "free citizens in a self-governing republic."
Mr. Hentoff once asked Justice William Brennan "a schoolboy's question": What is the most important amendment to the Constitution? "Brennan said the First Amendment, because all the other ones come from that. If you don't have free speech you have to be afraid, you lack a vital part of what it is to be a human being who is free to be who you want to be." Your own growth as a person will in time be constricted, because we come to know ourselves by our thoughts.
He wonders if Americans know who they are compared to what the Constitution says they are.
Mr. Hentoff's second point: An entrenched surveillance state will change and distort the balance that allows free government to function successfully. Broad and intrusive surveillance will, definitively, put government in charge. But a republic only works, Mr. Hentoff notes, if public officials know that they—and the government itself—answer to the citizens. It doesn't work, and is distorted, if the citizens must answer to the government. And that will happen more and more if the government knows—and you know—that the government has something, or some things, on you. "The bad thing is you no longer have the one thing we're supposed to have as Americans living in a self-governing republic," Mr. Hentoff said. "The people we elect are not your bosses, they are responsible to us." They must answer to us. But if they increasingly control our privacy, "suddenly they're in charge if they know what you're thinking."
This is a shift in the democratic dynamic. "If we don't have free speech then what can we do if the people who govern us have no respect for us, may indeed make life difficult for us, and in fact belittle us?"
If massive surveillance continues and grows, could it change the national character? "Yes, because it will change free speech."
What of those who say, "I have nothing to fear, I don't do anything wrong"? Mr. Hentoff suggests that's a false sense of security. "When you have this amount of privacy invasion put into these huge data banks, who knows what will come out?" Or can be made to come out through misunderstanding the data, or finagling, or mischief of one sort or another. "People say, 'Well I've done nothing wrong so why should I worry?' But that's too easy a way to get out of what is in our history—constant attempts to try to change who we are as Americans." Asked about those attempts, he mentions the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the Red Scare of the 1920s and the McCarthy era. Those times and incidents, he says, were more than specific scandals or news stories, they were attempts to change our nature as a people.
What of those who say they don't care what the federal government does as long as it keeps us safe? The threat of terrorism is real, Mr. Hentoff acknowledges. Al Qaeda is still here, its networks are growing. But you have to be careful about who's running U.S. intelligence and U.S. security, and they have to be fully versed in and obey constitutional guarantees. "There has to be somebody supervising them who knows what's right. . . . Terrorism is not going to go away. But we need someone in charge of the whole apparatus who has read the Constitution."
Advances in technology constantly up the ability of what government can do. Its technological expertise will only become deeper and broader. "They think they're getting to how you think. The technology is such that with the masses of databases, then privacy will get even weaker."
Mr. Hentoff notes that J. Edgar Hoover didn't have all this technology. "He would be so envious of what NSA can do."
-
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/nsa-report-on-privacy-violations-in-the-first-quarter-of-2012/395/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
-
" The inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship."
It already is this way with political "incorrect" speech.
"Privacy is connected to personhood. It has to do with intimate things—the innards of your head and heart, the workings of your mind—and the boundary between those things and the world outside."
"We talk about this now because of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency revelations, and new fears that we are operating, all of us, within what has become or is becoming a massive surveillance state."
Where is the beginning and end of privacy when a person uses electronic devices. All devices are now wireless and can be intruded upon. They are all made with ways to get into them. By the companies that make the devices, the software, or intercepting wireless transmissions. What about big data the private tech companies are hoarding about us?
One can't even "opt out". Why no outrage over this? Why is it Google's, or Microsoft's, or Apple's, or Amazon's business what I say, where I go, what I buy, or what I write?
Are people saying we must trust them yet not trust the government. The invasion of privacy and our thoughts is coming from the private as well as the government sector.
Snowden called those who would not agree naïve. I agree. I am living it so I understand. Most people do not and appear cannot understand. As I have said they will some day. Maybe now people are waking up to it?
Some on the right (and left) are using the surveillance issues for political purposes.. I agree with this from either political point of view. I also submit that we should all be very concerned about what private legal and illegal entities are also doing with the power they wield with all the information they are gathering with and without our consent.
-
The 17 pages of this thread are dedicated to those of us who do get it and provoking awareness of just how serious this is. That we have 50,000+ reads for this thread says some of us do get it.
-
"The 17 pages of this thread are dedicated to those of us who do get it and provoking awareness of just how serious this is. That we have 50,000+ reads for this thread says some of us do get it."
Who are the 50,000 plus readers and how come so few post? Are you sure it isn't the NSA, Google, organized crime, Chinese, Russians, Nigerians or Iranians just sparking hits while they troll the net?
I understand that some do get it yet we don't see general public outrage. Is it because there is outrage or concern that is just not being heard? Or because it still is so few of us who get it?
I listen to Savage and Levin who both view Snowden more positively than other Republicans such as McCain or the Bush crowd. I agree with them too and view him more as a whistleblower than a traitor. While they both express outrage over government surveillance of its own citizens neither to my knowledge says a peep about big corporations, doing the same thing.
I don't get a sense at all that our law enforcement is interested in this either. Unless one is a famous celebrity whose ipad is hacked. All we here about is crime is down. Well violent crime maybe. But white collar is skyrocketing. And it is bed with our politicians.
-
"Are you sure it isn't the NSA, Google, organized crime, Chinese, Russians, Nigerians or Iranians just sparking hits while they troll the net?"
Some hits perhaps are computer driven, Google, etc, but I there are different hit rates on different topics based on interest level. The Dog Brothers organization attracts the interest of people who never join and the forum has readers who never post - including 'famous people caught reading the forum. :wink:
-----
I disagree with you on Snowden. He did not make any effort to become a legitimate whistle blower and his leaks jeopardize our security.
-
Spilling secrets to the Chinese and Russians were not the acts of a patriot.
Snowden could have been called to testify by Rand Paul and disclosed potential criminal acts without compromising nat'l security.
-
Good point GM.
-
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/22/why_nobody_cares_about_the_surveillance_state_nsa
And yet, apart from some voices from the antiwar left and the libertarian right (on foreign policy there is considerable overlap between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement), the reaction from this deceived public for the most part has been strangely muted. It is not just the somewhat contradictory nature of the polls taken this summer, which have shown the public almost evenly split on whether the seemingly unlimited scope of these surveillance programs was doing more harm than good. It is akso that, unlike on issues such as immigration and abortion, much of the public outrage presupposed by news coverage of the scandal does not, in reality, seem to exist.
It is true that the revelations have caused at least some on the mainstream right, both in Congress and in conservative publications like National Review, to describe the NSA's activities as a fundamental attack on the rights of American citizens. The trend so worries more hawkish Republicans that one of their leaders, Rep. Peter King of New York, recently warned that "too many Republicans and conservatives have become Michael Moores." For their part, mainstream Democrats find themselves in the uncomfortable position of either defending what many of them view as indefensible or causing trouble for a beleaguered president who seems increasingly out of his depth on most questions of national security and foreign policy.
-
I would add that:
a) This issue can be subtle and complicated;
b) The government lies a lot about all this;
c) The pravdas lie a lot about this.
Therefore many people are keeping an eye on this, waiting for more information to come in and be tested before forming an opinion.
-
The Face Scan Arrives
By GINGER McCALL
Published: August 29, 2013 1 Comment
•
WASHINGTON — THE future of technological surveillance is fast approaching — and we are doing far too little to prepare ourselves.
Last week, thanks in part to documents that I and the Electronic Privacy Information Center obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the American public learned that the Department of Homeland Security is making considerable progress on a computerized tool called the Biometric Optical Surveillance System. The system, if completed, will use video cameras to scan people in public (or will be fed images of people from other sources) and then identify individuals by their faces, presumably by cross-referencing databases of driver’s license photos, mug shots or other facial images cataloged by name.
While this sort of technology may have benefits for law enforcement (recall that the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings were identified with help from camera footage), it also invites abuse. Imagine how easy it would be, in a society increasingly videotaped and monitored on closed-circuit television, for the authorities to identify antiwar protesters or Tea Party marchers and open dossiers on them, or for officials to track the public movements of ex-lovers or rivals. “Mission creep” often turns crime-fighting programs into instruments of abuse.
At the moment, there is little to no regulation or legal oversight of technologies like the Biometric Optical Surveillance System. We need to implement safeguards to protect our civil liberties — in particular, our expectation of some degree of anonymity in public.
The Department of Homeland Security is not the only agency developing facial-surveillance capacities. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has spent more than $1 billion on its Next Generation Identification program, which includes facial-recognition technology. This technology is expected to be deployed as early as next year and to contain at least 12 million searchable photos. The bureau has partnerships with at least seven states that give the agency access to facial-recognition-enabled databases of driver’s license photos.
State agencies are also participating in this technological revolution, though not yet using video cameras. On Monday, Ohio’s attorney general, Mike DeWine, confirmed reports that law enforcement officers in his state, without public notice, had deployed facial-recognition software on its driver’s license photo database, ostensibly to identify criminal suspects.
A total of 37 states have enabled facial-recognition software to search driver’s license photos, and only 11 have protections in place to limit access to such technologies by the authorities.
Defenders of this technology will say that no one has a legitimate expectation of privacy in public. But as surveillance technology improves, the distinction between public spaces and private spaces becomes less meaningful. There is a vast difference between a law enforcement officer’s sifting through thousands of hours of video footage in search of a person of interest, and his using software to instantly locate that person anywhere, at any time.
A person in public may have no reasonable expectation of privacy at any given moment, but he certainly has a reasonable expectation that the totality of his movements will not be effortlessly tracked and analyzed by law enforcement without probable cause. Such tracking, as the federal appellate judge Douglas H. Ginsburg once ruled, impermissibly “reveals an intimate picture of the subject’s life that he expects no one to have — short perhaps of his wife.”
Before the advent of these new technologies, time and effort created effective barriers to surveillance abuse. But those barriers are now being removed. They must be rebuilt in the law.
Two policies are necessary. First, facial-recognition databases should be populated only with images of known terrorists and convicted felons. Driver’s license photos and other images of “ordinary” people should never be included in a facial-recognition database without the knowledge and consent of the public.
Second, access to databases should be limited and monitored. Officers should be given access only after a court grants a warrant. The access should be tracked and audited. The authorities should have to publicly report what databases are being mined and provide aggregate numbers on how often they are used.
We cannot leave it to law enforcement agencies to determine, behind closed doors, how these databases are used. With the right safeguards, facial-recognition technology can be employed effectively without sacrificing essential liberties.
Ginger McCall, a lawyer and privacy advocate, is the founder of Advocates for Accountable Democracy.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130906&_r=0
-
Obama is completely wrong and a fool.
The tides of war are not receding. They are accelerating. The good and the bad of the human race is on full display on the internet. Nothing has changed. Just becoming more plain and transparant to see. The endless battle between good and evil. The need for encryption. The need to break encryption. The need to prevent breaking encryption. It never ends. It is becoming as mind boggling as the the universe.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/us/politics/legislation-seeks-to-bar-nsa-tactic-in-encryption.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130907&_r=0
-
http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/toshiba-invents-quantum-cryptography-network-and-the-nsa-cant-hack-it/#.UivS2j_NlDE
-
http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/toshiba-invents-quantum-cryptography-network-and-the-nsa-cant-hack-it/#.UivS2j_NlDE
I wouldn't bet on it.
-
I edited my Subject line to include a question mark :lol:
-
A long, but worthy read: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/privacy/
-
NSA Violated Privacy Protections, Officials Say
Revelation Calls Into Question Security of Phone-Record Database
By
SIOBHAN GORMAN
And
DEVLIN BARRETT
WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency's searches of a database containing phone records of millions of Americans violated privacy protections for three years by failing to meet a court-ordered standard, intelligence officials acknowledged Tuesday.
They said the violations continued until a judge ordered an overhaul of the program in 2009.
Since the breadth of the phone-records collection came to light through leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, lawmakers and top U.S. officials have defended the program. They have said that for all queries of the database, the NSA must show a "reasonable articulable suspicion" that the phone number being targeted is associated with a terrorist organization.
Between 2006 and 2009, however, of the 17,835 phone numbers checked against incoming phone records, only about 1,800 were based on that reasonable suspicion standard, officials said.
In a March 2009 order that was declassified Tuesday, Judge Reggie Walton of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said the government "frequently and systematically violated" the procedures it had said it was following. The judge criticized what he described as "repeated inaccurate statements made in the government's submissions."
The revelations called into question the NSA's ability to run the sweeping domestic surveillance programs it introduced more than 10 years ago in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Officials said the violations were inadvertent, because NSA officials didn't understand their own phone-records collection program. Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, told the judge in a 2009 legal declaration that "from a technical standpoint, there was no single person who had a complete technical understanding of the [business record] system architecture."
Top U.S. officials, including Gen. Alexander, have repeatedly reassured lawmakers and the public that the phone-records program has been carefully executed under oversight from the secret national security court.
"This is not a program where we are out freewheeling it," Gen. Alexander said in June. "It is a well-overseen and a very focused program."
Until Tuesday, officials hadn't described the period in which the program repeatedly violated court orders. They made public the violations as part of a court-ordered release of documents in lawsuits by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The release included roughly 1,800 pages of documents, including orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and government correspondence with the court.
The NSA violations occurred between 2006, when the phone-records program first came under court supervision, and 2009, when NSA officials told Judge Walton the program had been conducting searches using thousands of phone numbers that didn't meet court standards. Before 2006, the program was run without court supervision.
The program was developed under a provision of the Patriot Act that allows the NSA, through the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to collect business records "relevant to an authorized investigation." The NSA determined that nearly all U.S. phone-call records were "relevant" to its terrorism investigations, because it needed all the calls in order to determine with whom suspects were communicating.
The records, called "metadata," included phone numbers people dialed and where they were calling from, as part of a continuing investigation into international terrorism. The content of the calls isn't obtained under this program.
The NSA used an "alert list" of nearly 18,000 numbers of "counterterrorism interest" to screen phone records on a daily basis and determine which ones it should look at most closely, an intelligence official said. New phone records that had a relationship to those on the alert list were given a higher priority for subsequent possible searches that would be done if NSA could meet the "reasonable articulable suspicion" standard.
When the NSA acknowledged problems in the phone records surveillance program in March 2009, Judge Walton was upset enough to order Justice Department lawyers to intervene and help fix the program, officials said.
It wasn't until September 2009 that the problems were resolved to the judge's satisfaction, officials said. The program was overhauled so that all searches met the court-ordered standard, and the NSA established a new compliance office, which now oversees the phone data and other NSA spy programs.
In the interim, they said, the NSA had to get approval from the court on a case-by-case basis to search its database, though there was an exception allowing immediate searches in emergency cases. Officials said the NSA obtained court approval in specific cases multiple times.
That was a key time period in U.S. counterterrorism efforts, because in August and September of 2009 authorities were chasing a suspected terrorist bomb plotter, Najibullah Zazi, in a plan to detonate bombs aboard the New York City subway system.
Since revelations about the NSA's surveillance programs first emerged in June through Mr. Snowden's leaks to news media, the Obama administration has pointed to the Zazi case as a prime example of how such programs help stop terrorist attacks.
On Tuesday, intelligence officials said they didn't know how the problems in the phone-records program may have affected the Zazi case. They also said they couldn't remember if anyone at the NSA was reassigned or left the agency as a result of the errors. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said the NSA's discovery of the problems with the phone-records program and its reporting to the court show that oversight of the NSA surveillance programs works as designed.
The documents released Tuesday "are a testament to the government's strong commitment to detecting, correcting and reporting mistakes," Mr. Clapper said in a statement. He blamed the errors on the "complexity of the technology."
-
BP: That URL you posted looks very good-- why do you always post these things when I have not the time to give them a proper read?!?
-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/11/nsa-shares-raw-data-americans-israeli-spy-agency/
-
http://www.brookings.edu/research/podcasts/2013/08/30-ben-wittes-what-we-think-about-privacy-liberty-security-and-threat-is-wrong
-
Very frustrating that this is an interview without a transciption. The conversation seems quite good, but thirty minutes of undivided attention is more than I have to give out of my day and listening in the background as I work means I miss a lot. Like most people, I read A LOT faster than people talk.
-
Very frustrating that this is an interview without a transciption. The conversation seems quite good, but thirty minutes of undivided attention is more than I have to give out of my day and listening in the background as I work means I miss a lot. Like most people, I read A LOT faster than people talk.
Understood. Wittes is a smart guy who surrounds himself with other smart people. I thnk you would appreciate the discussion, if/when you get time. Luckily, it is exactly my work to listen to this.
-
http://nypost.com/2013/09/15/obamacare-will-question-your-sex-life/
Obamacare will question your sex life
By Betsy McCaughey
September 15, 2013 | 7:56pm
Obamacare will question your sex life
‘Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?”
Be ready to answer those questions and more the next time you go to the doctor, whether it’s the dermatologist or the cardiologist and no matter if the questions are unrelated to why you’re seeking medical help. And you can thank the Obama health law.
“This is nasty business,” says New York cardiologist Dr. Adam Budzikowski. He called the sex questions “insensitive, stupid and very intrusive.” He couldn’t think of an occasion when a cardiologist would need such information — but he knows he’ll be pushed to ask for it.
The president’s “reforms” aim to turn doctors into government agents, pressuring them financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary, and to violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients’ records confidential.
Embarrassing though it may be, you confide things to a doctor you wouldn’t tell anyone else. But this is entirely different.
Doctors and hospitals who don’t comply with the federal government’s electronic-health-records requirements forgo incentive payments now; starting in 2015, they’ll face financial penalties from Medicare and Medicaid. The Department of Health and Human Services has already paid out over $12.7 billion for these incentives.
Dr. Richard Amerling, a nephrologist and associate professor at Albert Einstein Medical College, explains that your medical record should be “a story created by you and your doctor solely for your treatment and benefit.” But the new requirements are turning it “into an interrogation, and the data will not be confidential.”
Lack of confidentiality is what concerned the New York Civil Liberties Union in a 2012 report. Electronic medical records have enormous benefits, but with one click of a mouse, every piece of information in a patient’s record, including the social history, is transmitted, disclosing too much.
The social-history questions also include whether you’ve ever used drugs, including IV drugs. As the NYCLU cautioned, revealing a patient’s past drug problem, even if it was a decade ago, risks stigma.
On the other end of the political spectrum is the Goldwater Institute, a free-market think tank. It argues that by requiring everyone to have health insurance and then imposing penalties on insurers, doctors and hospitals who don’t use the one-click electronic system, the law is violating Americans’ medical privacy.
The administration is ignoring these protests from privacy advocates. On Jan. 17, HHS announced patients who want to keep something out of their electronic record should pay cash. That’s impractical for most people.
There’s one question they can’t ask: Thanks to the NRA, Section 2716 of the ObamaCare law bars the federal government from compelling doctors and hospitals to ask you if you own a firearm.
But that’s the only question they can’t be told to ask you.
Where are the women’s rights groups that went to the barricades in the 1980s and 1990s to prevent the federal government from accessing a woman’s health records? Hypocritically, they are silent now.
Patients need to defend their own privacy by refusing to answer the intrusive social-history questions. If you need to confide something pertaining to your treatment, ask your doctor about keeping two sets of books so that your secret stays in the office. Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath seriously and won’t be offended.
Are such precautions paranoid? Hardly. WikiLeaker Bradley Manning showed how incompetent the government is at keeping its own secrets; incidents where various agencies accidentally disclose personal data like Social Security numbers are legion. And that’s not to mention the ways in which commercial databases are prone to hacking and/or exploitation.
Be careful about sharing your medical secrets with Uncle Sam.
Betsy McCaughey is the author of “Beating ObamaCare.”
-
Al-Qaeda's Wet Dream
Submitted by Capitalist Exploits on 09/19/2013 17:21 -0400
• Apple
• ETC
• national security
• None
• SWIFT
• Twitter
inShare
Originally posted at: CapitalistExploits.at
Imagine for a second you're a terrorist intent on inflicting unimaginable harm on your enemy. Now let's further imagine that your enemy is the United States...
The sun rises over your holy mother land, a land now inhabited by the infidels. You don your Kalishnikov, climb out of your cave, scan the skies searching for drones. Stroking your beard you wonder what the virgins do with their time between incoming martyrs. Then you contemplate how you might go about your Jihadist day, seeking (un)holy vengeance against the great Satan?
You pose a grave danger to the citizens of the United States - their government tells you so - you've seen it on CNN (satellite dish in the cave, of course). This brings you immense satisfaction and pride.
As you survey some stray goats wandering the barren hillside you're troubled as to how this can be so. Your options appear severely limited.
1. You could capture a passing, stray American NGO, decapitate them on video and post it for the world to see - along with a mouth frothing, unintelligible rant in a language few understand. Impact negligible...and lots of time spent stalking, capturing, struggling with your victim, etc. Then there's the whole decapitation thing...messy, very messy. Best to go back inside the cave and smoke your fine Afghan Hashish.
2. You consider another popular option. You could find yourself a locale full of infidels, oh say maybe a heavily-fortified US military base, strap a bomb to your ass and rush the gates. Impact better...however this one takes a bit of planning - gotta make sure not to blow the bomb in any practice runs. Then of course there's the nagging question as to whether the virgins really exist. Maybe a rethink is in order.
Sitting comfortably back in your cave you fire up the satellite dish and tune in to watch Wolf. To your amazement you find that you don't actually have to do anything! Your wildest fantasies are coming true...OK, not all; the virgins remain as elusive as ever.
What you find is that your enemy is being dealt some terrible blows without your having to do much more than smoke, herd and stare at your sandals - which you realise really do need replacing.
The damage is being done not by swish bang fighter jets from an invading army, not by any Jihadist bombers with scant regard for their innards, nor from any of your fellow sky-gazing, bearded, cave-dwelling brethren.
No, instead these blows come from none other than your enemies very own National Security Agency. The very chaps entrusted to protect the citizens of the great Satan!
To understand how this works, lets take a step back and consider what has allowed America to become so powerful.
In a phrase, "economic dominance". It is how the United States won the cold war and how it grew to be the greatest nation on earth. Capitalism was allowed to do what it inevitably does...create wealth. Sadly enough
capitalism (now cronyized), economic and personal freedom are undergoing exponential decay.
It costs money to become a military power. $695.7 billion at last count. More than any other nation on earth. A truly astonishingly, grotesque amount of waste to be sure. Pretty sure we could have eradicated poverty and disease with that "war chest" by now!
Financing this military machine, and indeed the entire government structure has to come from somewhere. Debt is one avenue, and whooboy are they using that particular lever. In the long run this will destroy the ability to wage wars. Hope springs eternal...
But let's look at what effect the NSA's forcing of US companies to corrupt their systems and provide illegal spying capabilities is now doing to America.
The US technology industry is by far the biggest in the world. However, consumers both in the US and especially outside its borders are beginning to realise what Ladar Levison, the founder of Lavabit meant when he said:
"This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a
strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States."
I thought about these comments when talking with a businessman in Asia yesterday. He said to me:
“Chris, we simply can't take the risk of our proprietary business intelligence getting into competitors/American businesses hands. We're looking at moving everything, our hardware, operating systems and we've already ditched all Microsoft software. Our business depends on our IP and proprietary information.”
Petrobras was spied on. Visa has a back door...as does SWIFT. Forget Skype, Facebook, Twitter, even the sacred Apple has been complicit!
Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's President cancelled a trip to the US until Mr. Obama can give her a satisfactory answer as to why a country that is supposedly a "friend" of the US is being spied on. According to the BBC:
"Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has called off a state visit to Washington next month in a row over allegations of US espionage."
Oooooh, someone is in trouble!
So, what do you do if you're a businessman with proprietary information that needs to be stored and shared? Parchment and quills won't work. You're still going to have to use technology, the only question is what technology and from where.
US technology companies that deal with data, Internet, etc, just like the US government, are increasingly being viewed as something that nobody in their right mind wants anything to do with. Pariahs, really.
While I don't personally use it, I would now never even consider using any Microsoft software. I'm even thinking of ditching my Mac. I don't use a smartphone - never have. Why take the risk?
Convenience? Hmmmm, how convenient is a tax audit or a crazy stalker? Wait, those are the same thing, right?
In regards to using Windows for example...there are a myriad of competing options, many of them superior in quality. Not to mention, I don't want to reward a company that treats me with disrespect, lies to me and steals my private information...allegedly of course. I'm their customer, yet they abuse me? No thank you.
From a macro perspective this has the potential to be far bigger than most realise, and I'm seeing the repercussions begin to unfold as normal, everyday people come to understand what exactly the threats are, and what they mean!
The danger of a government spying on you does not stop at simply analysing your spending habits and sharing that information with the tax department, who then cross check it with your tax bill, though this IS happening.
The risks run deep my friends, and even though the cat is out of the bag, it seems a non-event to the NSA and the US government. It's business as usual. I don't believe history is going to look back on these shenanigans kindly.
This is a trend worth following because fortunes are going to be lost - and made - as this continues to play itself out.
On a more personal level we can and must take steps NOW to protect ourselves. This involves carefully chosen hardware, software and understanding what our "digital self" looks like and how to go about protecting it.
Our friend and colleague “John”, an anarchocryptologist (is that a word?) by his own admission, has kindly put together a two-part report on laying the ground work for protecting your "digital self." Part I was released on Tuesday, and the ink has just dried on Part 2.
You can get a copy of both parts by clicking here
So, if you, like us believe that our privacy is worth protecting, that spying governments are not as benign as they suggest, then I encourage you to read it. It's FREE, unlike most of us any longer.
If not, then feel free to go back to the Kardashians and your bag of Cheetos, while updating your Facebook status and Instagram'ing the world a picture of your double bacon burger...with cheese.
You'll be just fine...really.
- Chris
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." - Ayn Rand
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/nsa-examines-social-networks-of-us-citizens.html?hp&_r=2&
-
BBG, thanks for posting this. I saw the article while I was on the road and wanted to post it here and so am particularly glad that you have done so.
Nice seeing you in WV! 8-)
-
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/09/30/226835934/your-digital-trail-and-how-it-can-be-used-against-you
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/us/snowdens-e-mail-provider-discusses-pressure-from-fbi-to-disclose-data.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131003
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/us/nsa-experiment-traced-us-cellphone-locations.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131003
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency conducted a secret pilot project in 2010 and 2011 to test the collection of bulk data about the location of Americans’ cellphones, but the agency never moved ahead with such a program, according to intelligence officials.
Related
The existence of the pilot project was reported on Wednesday morning by The New York Times and later confirmed by James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The project used data from cellphone towers to locate people’s cellphones.
In his testimony, Mr. Clapper revealed few details about the project. He said that the N.S.A. does not currently collect locational information under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the provision the government says is the legal basis for the N.S.A.’s once-secret program under which it collects logs of all domestic calls from telephone companies.
“In 2010 and 2011, N.S.A. received samples in order to test the ability of its systems to handle the data format, but that data was not used for any other purpose and was never available for intelligence analysis purposes,” Mr. Clapper said.
He added that the N.S.A. had promised to notify Congress and seek the approval of a secret surveillance court in the future before any locational data was collected using Section 215.
An official familiar with the test project said its purpose was to see how the locational data would flow into the N.S.A.’s systems. While real data was used, it was never drawn upon in any investigation, the official said. It was unclear how many Americans’ locational data was collected as part of the project, whether the agency has held on to that information or why the program did not go forward.
But Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who receives classified briefings as a member of the Intelligence Committee and who has raised concerns about cellphone location tracking, said in a statement that there was more to know about the matter than the government had now declassified.
“After years of stonewalling on whether the government has ever tracked or planned to track the location of law-abiding Americans through their cellphones, once again, the intelligence leadership has decided to leave most of the real story secret — even when the truth would not compromise national security,” Mr. Wyden said.
Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the director of the N.S.A., who also testified Wednesday at the hearing, sharply criticized an article on the agency in The New York Times on Sunday. He said it was “flat wrong” that the agency was “creating dossiers on Americans from social networks.” He added that “we’re not creating social networks on our families.”
The article, based on documents leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, said that the agency changed a policy several years ago to allow “contact chaining” of Americans who had been in touch, directly or indirectly, with foreign intelligence suspects, using phone and e-mail logging data. It also described the process of data “enrichment,” by which other data — including information that is publicly or commercially available — is added to flesh out analysts’ understanding of people associated with various phone numbers in the social network analysis.
The article said it was not known how many Americans’ data was used in this process.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said Wednesday that he was drafting legislation to eliminate the N.S.A.’s ability to systematically obtain Americans’ calling records.
“The government has not made its case that bulk collection of domestic phone records is an effective counterterrorism tool, especially in light of the intrusion on American privacy,” Mr. Leahy said.
But Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence committee, warned that ending the bulk call records program would increase the risk of a terrorist attack.
“I so regret what is happening; I will do everything I can to prevent this program from being canceled out,” she said.
Questions about what, if anything, the agency has been doing to track Americans’ movements using cellphone location data have been simmering for years. The issue flared up again after an ambiguous exchange between Mr. Wyden and General Alexander at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week.
Mr. Wyden has been a critic of domestic surveillance programs and filed legislation in 2011 and again this year to require warrants for obtaining someone’s locational data in a criminal investigation. He has not disclosed what prompted his concerns.
At the hearing last week, Mr. Wyden asked Mr. Alexander “whether the N.S.A. has ever collected or made any plans to collect Americans’ cell-site information in bulk.”
General Alexander replied that the N.S.A. was not “receiving cell-site location data and has no current plans to do so” under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the secret surveillance court to issue orders for records from businesses — like telephone companies — if the records are “relevant” to an intelligence investigation.
But General Alexander also said last week that there was other classified information that the N.S.A. had sent to the committee that provided “additional detail.”
It is unclear whether long-term tracking of people’s movements by the government raises privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment. In a 1979 case involving the small-scale collection of calling logs, the Supreme Court ruled that such records were not protected by constitutional privacy rights because people had already revealed the existence of their calls to telephone companies.
But in a 2012 case about the police’s use of a GPS tracker attached to a suspect’s car, five justices suggested that any long-term, automated collection of a person’s publicly displayed actions might raise Fourth Amendment issues.
-
Editorial
Monitoring Your Every Move
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: October 9, 2013
You may have even less privacy than you thought.
Most Internet users know that Web sites and advertisers monitor what they do online and use that information to pitch products and services. What’s not as well known is that these companies can track individuals as they move between devices like personal computers, cellphones and tablets. This type of “cross-device” tracking raises significant privacy concerns because most users are simply unaware that it is taking place.
Internet companies capable of such monitoring do it through various means, including by figuring out if different devices are using the same Internet connection and are visiting the same Web sites and mobile apps. If, for instance, you have used your home computer to research a Hawaiian vacation, travel companies can show you ads for flights to Honolulu on apps you use on your cellphone.
Internet businesses argue that such targeting benefits everybody: advertisers get access to customers who are more likely to buy their products while individuals receive offers for stuff they are interested in. (The New York Times’s mobile apps include software from advertising networks that gather nonpersonal information about how readers use the newspaper.)
But there’s also a big privacy issue. Many Americans worry that the Internet has already extracted more personal information about them they would like. Now comes the news that advertisers can follow people from work computer to tablet computer to cellphone even though those devices are not connected to one another. New technology also allows advertisers access to mobile phones without the “cookies” they need to access personal computers. This makes it harder than ever for users to escape the gaze of private companies.
By connecting information from these devices, database companies that collect information can know a lot more about individuals than previously thought possible, including, for instance, their physical location and the identity of family members, friends and colleagues. The use of this information to target advertising might amount to a mere annoyance to most people. But such information could also end up in detailed individual profiles that could be obtained by government agencies or purchased by employers or banks to evaluate candidates for jobs or loans.
At some point, the makers of computers, phones and software may devise new tools that allow people to protect themselves from sophisticated forms of tracking. But they will always be one step behind firms that are in the business of collecting information.
The best solution is for lawmakers to pass legislation that sets clear rules that would regulate and limit how businesses collect personal information, what they can use it for and how long they keep it. The rules, which could be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, should also give consumers an easy way to review files about themselves or simply choose not to have the information collected. At the moment, the advantage on the Internet lies increasingly with the data miners and the advertisers, not the consumer.
Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »
-
Good points, but since it is the NYT, a loss of privacy is troubling if the aim is private commerce or to advance national security, but not when it occurs in a government healthcare takeover.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/technology/privacy-fears-as-surveillance-grows-in-cities.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131014
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/14/report-nsa-collects-millions-of-contact-lists-from-personal-email-and-instant-messaging-accounts-globally/#
-
Door May Open for Challenge to Secret Wiretaps
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: October 16, 2013 1 Comment
WASHINGTON — Five years after Congress authorized a sweeping warrantless surveillance program, the Justice Department is setting up a potential Supreme Court test of whether it is constitutional by notifying a criminal defendant — for the first time — that evidence against him derived from the eavesdropping, according to officials.
Senator Dianne Feinstein gave a speech in 2012 that some took to suggest that warrantless wiretaps contributed to several terrorism cases. A Senate lawyer now says she was misunderstood.
Prosecutors plan to inform the defendant about the monitoring in the next two weeks, a law enforcement official said. The move comes after an internal Justice Department debate in which Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. argued that there was no legal basis for a previous practice of not disclosing links to such surveillance, several Obama administration officials familiar with the deliberations said.
Meanwhile, the department’s National Security Division is combing active and closed case files to identify other defendants who faced evidence resulting from the 2008 wiretapping law. It permits eavesdropping without warrants on Americans’ cross-border phone calls and e-mails so long as the surveillance is “targeted” at foreigners abroad.
It is not yet clear how many other such cases there are, nor whether prosecutors will notify convicts whose cases are already over. Such a decision could set off attempts to reopen those cases.
“It’s of real legal importance that components of the Justice Department disagreed about when they had a duty to tell a defendant that the surveillance program was used,” said Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor. “It’s a big deal because one view covers so many more cases than the other, and this is an issue that should have come up repeatedly over the years.”
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose internal discussions. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on a recent court filing in which the department, reversing an earlier stance, said it was obliged to disclose to defendants if evidence used in court was linked to warrantless surveillance, but it remained unclear if there were any such cases.
The debate was part of the fallout about National Security Agency surveillance set off by leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor. They have drawn attention to the 2008 law, the FISA Amendments Act, which legalized a form of the Bush administration’s once-secret warrantless surveillance program.
In February, the Supreme Court dismissed a case challenging its constitutionality because the plaintiffs, led by Amnesty International, could not prove they had been wiretapped. Mr. Verrilli had told the justices that someone else would have legal standing to trigger review of the program because prosecutors would notify people facing evidence derived from surveillance under the 2008 law.
But it turned out that Mr. Verrilli’s assurances clashed with the practices of national security prosecutors, who had not been alerting such defendants that evidence in their cases had stemmed from wiretapping their conversations without a warrant.
Jameel Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued in the Supreme Court on behalf of the plaintiffs challenging the 2008 law, said that someone in the Justice Department should have flagged the issue earlier and that the department must do more than change its practice going forward.
“The government has an obligation to tell the Supreme Court, in some formal way, that a claim it made repeatedly, and that the court relied on in its decision, was simply not true,” he said. “And it has an obligation to notify the criminal defendants whose communications were monitored under the statute that their communications were monitored.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. The department’s practices came under scrutiny after a December 2012 speech by Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee. During debate over extending the 2008 law, she warned that terrorism remained a threat. Listing several terrorism-related arrests, she added, “so this has worked.”
Lawyers in two of the cases Ms. Feinstein mentioned — one in Fort Lauderdale and one in Chicago — asked prosecutors this spring to confirm that surveillance under the 2008 law had played a role in the investigations of their clients so they could challenge it.
But prosecutors said they did not have to make such a disclosure. On June 7, The New York Times published an article citing Ms. Feinstein’s speech and the stance the prosecutors had taken.
As a result, Mr. Verrilli sought an explanation from national security lawyers about why they had not flagged the issue when vetting his Supreme Court briefs and helping him practice for the arguments, according to officials.
====================
Page 2 of 2)
The national security lawyers explained that it was a misunderstanding, the officials said. Because the rules on wiretapping warrants in foreign intelligence cases are different from the rules in ordinary criminal investigations, they said, the division has long used a narrow understanding of what “derived from” means in terms of when it must disclose specifics to defendants.
In national security cases involving orders issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA, prosecutors alert defendants only that some evidence derives from a FISA wiretap, but not details like whether there had just been one order or a chain of several. Only judges see those details.
After the 2008 law, that generic approach meant that prosecutors did not disclose when some traditional FISA wiretap orders had been obtained using information gathered through the warrantless wiretapping program. Division officials believed it would have to disclose the use of that program only if it introduced a recorded phone call or intercepted e-mail gathered directly from the program — and for five years, they avoided doing so.
For Mr. Verrilli, that raised a more fundamental question: was there any persuasive legal basis for failing to clearly notify defendants that they faced evidence linked to the 2008 warrantless surveillance law, thereby preventing them from knowing that they had an opportunity to argue that it derived from an unconstitutional search?
The debate stretched through June and July, officials said, including multiple meetings and dueling memorandums by lawyers in the solicitor general office and in the national security division, which has been led since March by acting Assistant Attorney General John Carlin. The deliberations were overseen by James Cole, the deputy attorney general.
National security lawyers and a policy advisory committee of senior United States attorneys focused on operational worries: Disclosure risked alerting foreign targets that their communications were being monitored, so intelligence agencies might become reluctant to share information with law enforcement officials that could become a problem in a later trial.
But Mr. Verrilli argued that withholding disclosure from defendants could not be justified legally, officials said. Lawyers with several agencies — including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the N.S.A. and the office of the director of national intelligence — concurred, officials said, and the division changed the practice going forward.
National Security Division lawyers began looking at other cases, eventually identifying the one that will be publicly identified soon and are still looking through closed cases and deciding what to do about them.
But in a twist, in the Chicago and Fort Lauderdale cases that Ms. Feinstein had mentioned, prosecutors made new court filings saying they did not intend to use any evidence derived from surveillance of the defendants under the 2008 law.
When defense lawyers asked about Ms. Feinstein’s remarks, a Senate lawyer responded in a letter that she “did not state, and did not mean to state” that those cases were linked to the warrantless surveillance program. Rather, the lawyer wrote, her point was that terrorism remained a problem.
In a recent court filing, the lawyers wrote that it is “hard to believe” Ms. Feinstein would cite “random” cases when pressing to reauthorize the 2008 law, suggesting either that the government is still concealing something or that she had employed the “politics of fear” to influence the debate. A spokesman for Ms. Feinstein said she preferred to let the letter speak for itself.
-
Hat tip to BD; pasting this here from his post in the Constitutional Law thread
http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/10/appeals-court-limits-gps-tracking/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scotusblog%2FpFXs+%28SCOTUSblog%29
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/technology/no-us-action-so-states-move-on-privacy-law.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131031&_r=0
-
Delaware, Den of Thieves?
By JOHN A. CASSARA
Published: November 1, 2013 69 Comments
OUTSIDE of crimes of passion, criminal activity is typically motivated by greed.
As a special agent for the Treasury Department, I investigated financial crimes like money laundering and terrorism financing. I trained foreign police forces to “follow the money” and track the flow of capital across borders.
During these training sessions, I’d often hear this: “My agency has a financial crimes investigation. The money trail leads to the American state of Delaware. We can’t get any information and don’t know what to do. We are going to have to close our investigation. Can you help?"
The question embarrassed me. There was nothing I could do.
In the years I was assigned to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or Fincen, I observed many formal requests for assistance having to do with companies associated with Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming. These states have a tawdry image: they have become nearly synonymous with underground financing, tax evasion and other bad deeds facilitated by anonymous shell companies — or by companies lacking information on their “beneficial owners,” the person or entity that actually controls the company, not the (often meaningless) name under which the company is registered.
Our State and Treasury Departments routinely identify countries that are havens for financial crimes. But, whether because of shortsightedness or hypocrisy, we overlook the financial crimes that are abetted in our own country by lax state laws. While the problem is concentrated in Delaware, there has been a “race to the bottom” by other states that have enacted corporate secrecy laws to try to attract incorporation fees.
The Financial Action Task Force, an international body that sets standards for the fight against money laundering, terrorist financing and other threats to the international financial system, has repeatedly criticized America for failing to comply with a guideline requiring the disclosure of beneficial ownership information. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with which the task force is affiliated, has championed international standards for financial transparency, but cannot compel compliance.
Watchdog groups like the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Global Financial Integrity and Global Witness say that anonymous companies registered in the United States have become the vehicle of choice for drug dealers, organized criminals and corrupt politicians to evade taxes and launder illicit funds. A study by researchers at Brigham Young University, the University of Texas and Griffith University in Australia concluded that America was the second easiest country, after Kenya, in which to incorporate a shell company.
Domestic law enforcement agencies are as stymied as foreign ones. In one case I worked on, American investigators had to give up their examination of a Nevada-based corporation that had received more than 3,700 suspicious wire transfers totaling $81 million over two years. The case did not result in prosecution because the investigators could not definitively identify the owners.
Anonymous corporations are not only favored tools of criminals, but they also facilitate corruption, particularly in the developing world. A recent World Bank study found that the United States was the favored destination for corrupt foreign politicians opening phantom companies to conceal their ill-gotten gains.
Last month, Representatives Maxine Waters of California and Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, the top Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee, introduced legislation that would require United States corporations to disclose to the Treasury Department their beneficial owners. On Thursday, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain went even further, announcing that a planned national registry of companies’ true owners would be open to the public, not just to law enforcement authorities.
The proposal enjoys support from law enforcement experts like Dennis M. Lormel, who led the F.B.I.’s efforts against terrorism financing after 9/11, and the former Manhattan district attorney Robert M. Morgenthau (and his successor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr.).
While officials in Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada talk about their corporate “traditions,” I am unimpressed. Business incorporation fees have accounted for as much as a quarter of Delaware’s general revenues. It’s no surprise that officials in Dover and Wilmington want to protect their state’s status as a corporate registry, but if that means facilitating criminal activity, their stance is a form of willful blindness. America must require uniform corporate-registration practices if it is to persuade other nations to cooperate in the fight against financial crimes.
John A. Cassara, a former special agent for the Treasury Department, is the author, most recently, of a novel, “Demons of Gadara.”
-
NSA Harvesting Contact Lists
A new Snowden document shows that the NSA is harvesting contact lists --
e-mail address books, IM buddy lists, etc. -- from Google, Yahoo,
Microsoft, Facebook, and others.
Unlike PRISM, this unnamed program collects the data from the Internet .
This is similar to how the NSA identifies Tor users. They get direct
access to the Internet backbone, either through secret agreements with
companies like AT&T, or surreptitiously, by doing things like tapping
undersea cables. Once they have the data, they have powerful packet
inspectors -- code names include TUMULT, TURBULENCE, and TURMOIL -- that
run a bunch of different identification and copying systems. One of
them, code name unknown, searches for these contact lists and copies
them. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc., have no idea that this is
happening, nor have they consented to their data being harvested in this
way.
These contact lists provide the NSA with the same sort of broad
surveillance that the Verizon (and others) phone-record "metadata"
collection programs provide: information about who are our friends,
lovers, confidants, associates. This is incredibly intimate
information, all collected without any warrant or due process. Metadata
equals surveillance; always remember that.
The quantities are interesting:
During a single day last year, the NSA's Special Source
Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from
Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from
Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers....
Note that Gmail, which uses SSL by default, provides the NSA with much
less data than Yahoo, which doesn't, despite the fact that Gmail has
many more users than Yahoo does. (It's actually kind of amazing how
small that Gmail number is.) This implies that, despite BULLRUN,
encryption works. Ubiquitous use of SSL can foil NSA eavesdropping.
This is the same lesson we learned from the NSA's attempts to break Tor:
encryption works.
In response to this story, Yahoo has finally decided to enable SSL by
default: by January 2014.
The "New York Times" makes this observation:
Spokesmen for the eavesdropping organizations reassured The
Post that we shouldn't bother our heads with all of this. They
have "checks and balances built into our tools," said one
intelligence official.
Since the Snowden leaks began, the administration has adopted
an interesting definition of that term. It used to be that
"checks and balances" referred to one branch of the government
checking and balancing the other branches -- like the Supreme
Court deciding whether laws are constitutional.
Now the N.S.A., the C.I.A. and the White House use the term to
refer to a secret organization reviewing the actions it has
taken and deciding in secret by itself whether they were legal
and constitutional.
One more amusing bit: the NSA has a spam problem.
Spam has proven to be a significant problem for the NSA --
clogging databases with information that holds no foreign
intelligence value. The majority of all e-mails, one NSA
document says, "are SPAM from 'fake addresses and never
'delivered' to targets."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-collects-millions-of-e-mail-address-books-globally/2013/10/14/8e58b5be-34f9-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html
or http://tinyurl.com/kn8ld96
PRISM:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data
The NSA at Tor:
https://www.schneier.com/essay-455.html
https://www.schneier.com/essay-454.html
How the NSA gets access:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/agreements-with-private-companies-protect-us-access-to-cables-data-for-surveillance/2013/07/06/aa5d017a-df77-11e2-b2d4-ea6d8f477a01_story.html
or http://tinyurl.com/qdawe6b
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/02/telecoms-bt-vodafone-cables-gchq
or http://tinyurl.com/ntk6vde
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324108204579022874091732470.html
or http://tinyurl.com/lat5vy7
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa
or http://tinyurl.com/ps3g4z2
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the-creepy-long-standing-practice-of-undersea-cable-tapping/277855/
or http://tinyurl.com/o6b7unb
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order
or http://tinyurl.com/qaynuex
Metadata equals surveillance:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/metadata_equals.html
BULLRUN:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security
or http://tinyurl.com/m47p5dc
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html
or http://tinyurl.com/m9chca6
Yahoo switching to SSL by default:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/14/4838878/yahoo-mail-is-switching-to-default-ssl-encryption
or http://tinyurl.com/n89gddz
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/15/yahoo_mail_encryption_by_default_in_2014/
or http://tinyurl.com/ktqqmy8
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/14/yahoo-to-make-ssl-encryption-the-default-for-webmail-users-finally/
or http://tinyurl.com/kdthaoj
https://twitter.com/ashk4n/status/389892774637891584
NSA source documents for the story:
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/the-nsas-overcollection-problem/517/
or http://tinyurl.com/lcdas97
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/how-the-nsa-tried-to-collect-less/518/
or http://tinyurl.com/kagnc6d
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/an-excerpt-from-intellipedia/519/
or http://tinyurl.com/mf9ku9r
"New York Times" story:
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/the-n-s-a-may-have-your-address-book/
or http://tinyurl.com/kmwl7yt
-
second post
NSA Eavesdropping on Google and Yahoo Networks
The "Washington Post" reported that the NSA is eavesdropping on the
Google and Yahoo private networks -- the code name for the program is
MUSCULAR. I may write more about this later, but I have some initial
comments:
* It's a measure of how far off the rails the NSA has gone that it's
taking its Cold War–era eavesdropping tactics -- surreptitiously
eavesdropping on foreign networks -- and applying them to US
corporations. It's skirting US law by targeting the portion of these
corporate networks outside the US. It's the same sort of legal argument
the NSA used to justify collecting address books and buddy lists worldwide.
* Although the "Washington Post" article specifically talks about Google
and Yahoo, you have to assume that all the other major -- and many of
the minor -- cloud services are compromised this same way. That means
Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Badoo, Dropbox, and on and
on and on.
* It is well worth re-reading all the government denials about bulk
collection and direct access after PRISM was exposed. It seems that
it's impossible to get the truth out of the NSA. Its carefully worded
denials always seem to hide what's really going on.
* In light of this, PRISM is really just insurance: a way for the NSA to
get legal cover for information it already has. My guess is that the
NSA collects the vast majority of its data surreptitiously, using
programs such as these. Then, when it has to share the information with
the FBI or other organizations, it gets it again through a more public
program like PRISM.
* What this really shows is how robust the surveillance state is, and
how hard it will be to craft laws reining in the NSA. All the bills
being discussed so far only address portions of the problem: specific
programs or specific legal justifications. But the NSA's surveillance
infrastructure is much more robust than that. It has many ways into our
data, and all sorts of tricks to get around the law. Note this quote:
John Schindler, a former NSA chief analyst and frequent
defender who teaches at the Naval War College, said it is
obvious why the agency would prefer to avoid restrictions where
it can.
"Look, NSA has platoons of lawyers, and their entire job is
figuring out how to stay within the law and maximize collection
by exploiting every loophole," he said. "It's fair to say the
rules are less restrictive under Executive Order 12333 than
they are under FISA," the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act.
No surprise, really. But it illustrates how difficult meaningful reform
will be. I wrote this in September:
It's time to start cleaning up this mess. We need a special
prosecutor, one not tied to the military, the corporations
complicit in these programs, or the current political
leadership, whether Democrat or Republican. This prosecutor
needs free rein to go through the NSA's files and discover the
full extent of what the agency is doing, as well as enough
technical staff who have the capability to understand it. He
needs the power to subpoena government officials and take their
sworn testimony. He needs the ability to bring criminal
indictments where appropriate. And, of course, he needs the
requisite security clearance to see it all.
We also need something like South Africa's Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, where both government and corporate
employees can come forward and tell their stories about NSA
eavesdropping without fear of reprisal.
Without this, crafting reform legislation will be impossible.
* We don't actually know if the NSA did this surreptitiously, or if it
had assistance from another US corporation. Level 3 Communications
provides the data links to Google, and its statement was sufficiently
non-informative as to be suspicious:
In a statement, Level 3 said: "We comply with the laws in each
country where we operate. In general, governments that seek
assistance in law enforcement or security investigations
prohibit disclosure of the assistance provided."
On the other hand, Level 3 Communications already cooperates with the
NSA, and has the codename of LITTLE:
The document identified for the first time which telecoms
companies are working with GCHQ's "special source" team. It
gives top secret codenames for each firm, with BT ("Remedy"),
Verizon Business ("Dacron"), and Vodafone Cable ("Gerontic").
The other firms include Global Crossing ("Pinnage"), Level 3
("Little"), Viatel ("Vitreous") and Interoute ("Streetcar").
Again, those code names should properly be in all caps.
When I write that the NSA has destroyed the fabric of trust on the
Internet, this is the kind of thing I mean. Google can no longer trust
its bandwidth providers not to betray the company.
* The NSA's denial is pretty lame. It feels as if it's hardly trying
anymore.
* Finally, we need more encryption on the Internet. We have made
surveillance too cheap, not just for the NSA but for all nation-state
adversaries. We need to make it expensive again.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/the-nsas-three-types-of-cable-interception-programs/553/
or http://tinyurl.com/kh7g9jc
PRISM:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html
or http://tinyurl.com/mm3ttqt
My September quote:
https://www.schneier.com/essay-447.html
Level-3 statement:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/technology/nsa-is-mining-google-and-yahoo-abroad.html
or http://tinyurl.com/qys9fot
The NSA's betrayal of the Internet
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/conspiracy_theo_1.html or
http://tinyurl.com/nyxxyzd
The NSA's denial:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/10/30/report-nsa-intercepts-google-and-yahoo-server-data/
or http://tinyurl.com/ld7kgk3
http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/10/30/nsa-non-denial-denial-241352052/ or
http://tinyurl.com/q8kj7nt
Level-3's NSA code name:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa
or http://tinyurl.com/k8gr7o2
-
third post
Code Names for NSA Exploit Tools
This is from a Snowden document released by "Le Monde":
General Term Descriptions:
HIGHLANDS: Collection from Implants
VAGRANT: Collection of Computer Screens
MAGNETIC: Sensor Collection of Magnetic Emanations
MINERALIZE: Collection from LAN Implant
OCEAN: Optical Collection System for Raster-Based Computer
Screens
LIFESAFER: Imaging of the Hard Drive
GENIE: Multi-stage operation: jumping the airgap etc.
BLACKHEART: Collection from an FBI Implant
[...]
DROPMIRE: Passive collection of emanations using antenna
CUSTOMS: Customs opportunities (not LIFESAVER)
DROPMIRE: Laser printer collection, purely proximal access
(***NOT*** implanted)
DEWSWEEPER: USB (Universal Serial Bus) hardware host tap that
provides COVERT link over US link into a target network.
Operates w/RF relay subsystem to provide wireless Bridge into
target network.
RADON: Bi-directional host tap that can inject Ethernet packets
onto the same targets. Allows bi-directional exploitation of
denied networks using standard on-net tools.
There's a lot to think about in this list. RADON and DEWSWEEPER seem
particularly interesting.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/807030-ambassade.html#document/p1 or
http://tinyurl.com/ove78gw
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Defending Against Crypto Backdoors
We already know the NSA wants to eavesdrop on the Internet. It has
secret agreements with telcos to get direct access to bulk Internet
traffic. It has massive systems like TUMULT, TURMOIL, and TURBULENCE to
sift through it all. And it can identify ciphertext -- encrypted
information -- and figure out which programs could have created it.
But what the NSA wants is to be able to read that encrypted information
in as close to real-time as possible. It wants backdoors, just like the
cybercriminals and less benevolent governments do.
And we have to figure out how to make it harder for them, or anyone
else, to insert those backdoors.
How the NSA Gets Its Backdoors
The FBI tried to get backdoor access embedded in an AT&T secure
telephone system in the mid-1990s. The Clipper Chip included something
called a LEAF: a Law Enforcement Access Field. It was the key used to
encrypt the phone conversation, itself encrypted in a special key known
to the FBI, and it was transmitted along with the phone conversation. An
FBI eavesdropper could intercept the LEAF and decrypt it, then use the
data to eavesdrop on the phone call.
But the Clipper Chip faced severe backlash, and became defunct a few
years after being announced.
Having lost that public battle, the NSA decided to get its backdoors
through subterfuge: by asking nicely, pressuring, threatening, bribing,
or mandating through secret order. The general name for this program is
BULLRUN.
Defending against these attacks is difficult. We know from subliminal
channel and kleptography research that it's pretty much impossible to
guarantee that a complex piece of software isn't leaking secret
information. We know from Ken Thompson's famous talk on "trusting trust"
(first delivered in the ACM Turing Award Lectures) that you can never be
totally sure if there's a security flaw in your software.
Since BULLRUN became public last month, the security community has been
examining security flaws discovered over the past several years, looking
for signs of deliberate tampering. The Debian random number flaw was
probably not deliberate, but the 2003 Linux security vulnerability
probably was. The DUAL_EC_DRBG random number generator may or may not
have been a backdoor. The SSL 2.0 flaw was probably an honest mistake.
The GSM A5/1 encryption algorithm was almost certainly deliberately
weakened. All the common RSA moduli out there in the wild: we don't
know. Microsoft's _NSAKEY looks like a smoking gun, but honestly, we
don't know.
How the NSA Designs Backdoors
While a separate program that sends our data to some IP address
somewhere is certainly how any hacker -- from the lowliest script kiddie
up to the NSA -- spies on our computers, it's too labor-intensive to
work in the general case.
For government eavesdroppers like the NSA, subtlety is critical. In
particular, three characteristics are important:
* Low discoverability. The less the backdoor affects the normal
operations of the program, the better. Ideally, it shouldn't affect
functionality at all. The smaller the backdoor is, the better. Ideally,
it should just look like normal functional code. As a blatant example,
an email encryption backdoor that appends a plaintext copy to the
encrypted copy is much less desirable than a backdoor that reuses most
of the key bits in a public IV (initialization vector).
* High deniability. If discovered, the backdoor should look like a
mistake. It could be a single opcode change. Or maybe a "mistyped"
constant. Or "accidentally" reusing a single-use key multiple times.
This is the main reason I am skeptical about _NSAKEY as a deliberate
backdoor, and why so many people don't believe the DUAL_EC_DRBG backdoor
is real: they're both too obvious.
* Minimal conspiracy. The more people who know about the backdoor, the
more likely the secret is to get out. So any good backdoor should be
known to very few people. That's why the recently described potential
vulnerability in Intel's random number generator worries me so much; one
person could make this change during mask generation, and no one else
would know.
These characteristics imply several things:
* A closed-source system is safer to subvert, because an open-source
system comes with a greater risk of that subversion being discovered. On
the other hand, a big open-source system with a lot of developers and
sloppy version control is easier to subvert.
* If a software system only has to interoperate with itself, then it is
easier to subvert. For example, a closed VPN encryption system only has
to interoperate with other instances of that same proprietary system.
This is easier to subvert than an industry-wide VPN standard that has to
interoperate with equipment from other vendors.
* A commercial software system is easier to subvert, because the profit
motive provides a strong incentive for the company to go along with the
NSA's requests.
* Protocols developed by large open standards bodies are harder to
influence, because a lot of eyes are paying attention. Systems designed
by closed standards bodies are easier to influence, especially if the
people involved in the standards don't really understand security.
* Systems that send seemingly random information in the clear are easier
to subvert. One of the most effective ways of subverting a system is by
leaking key information -- recall the LEAF -- and modifying random
nonces or header information is the easiest way to do that.
Design Strategies for Defending against Backdoors
With these principles in mind, we can list design strategies. None of
them is foolproof, but they are all useful. I'm sure there's more; this
list isn't meant to be exhaustive, nor the final word on the topic. It's
simply a starting place for discussion. But it won't work unless
customers start demanding software with this sort of transparency.
* Vendors should make their encryption code public, including the
protocol specifications. This will allow others to examine the code for
vulnerabilities. It's true we won't know for sure if the code we're
seeing is the code that's actually used in the application, but
surreptitious substitution is hard to do, forces the company to outright
lie, and increases the number of people required for the conspiracy to work.
* The community should create independent compatible versions of
encryption systems, to verify they are operating properly. I envision
companies paying for these independent versions, and universities
accepting this sort of work as good practice for their students. And
yes, I know this can be very hard in practice.
* There should be no master secrets. These are just too vulnerable.
* All random number generators should conform to published and accepted
standards. Breaking the random number generator is the easiest
difficult-to-detect method of subverting an encryption system. A
corollary: we need better published and accepted RNG standards.
* Encryption protocols should be designed so as not to leak any random
information. Nonces should be considered part of the key or public
predictable counters if possible. Again, the goal is to make it harder
to subtly leak key bits in this information.
This is a hard problem. We don't have any technical controls that
protect users from the authors of their software.
And the current state of software makes the problem even harder: Modern
apps chatter endlessly on the Internet, providing noise and cover for
covert communications. Feature bloat provides a greater "attack surface"
for anyone wanting to install a backdoor.
In general, what we need is assurance: methodologies for ensuring that a
piece of software does what it's supposed to do and nothing more.
Unfortunately, we're terrible at this. Even worse, there's not a lot of
practical research in this area -- and it's hurting us badly right now.
Yes, we need legal prohibitions against the NSA trying to subvert
authors and deliberately weaken cryptography. But this isn't just about
the NSA, and legal controls won't protect against those who don't follow
the law and ignore international agreements. We need to make their job
harder by increasing their risk of discovery. Against a risk-averse
adversary, it might be good enough.
This essay previously appeared on Wired.com.
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/10/how-to-design-and-defend-against-the-perfect-backdoor/
or http://tinyurl.com/o3uu76x
The NSA's secret agreements:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/senator_feinste.html
Clipper Chip:
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/12/magazine/battle-of-the-clipper-chip.html
or http://tinyurl.com/m7fse2w
How the NSA get around encryption:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html
or http://tinyurl.com/m9chca6
http://mashable.com/2013/09/11/fbi-microsoft-bitlocker-backdoor/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57595202-38/feds-put-heat-on-web-firms-for-master-encryption-keys/
or http://tinyurl.com/l2nam6s
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/us/snowdens-e-mail-provider-discusses-pressure-from-fbi-to-disclose-data.html
or http://tinyurl.com/lz2moej
BULLRUN:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security
or http://tinyurl.com/m47p5dc
Subliminal channels:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_channel
Kleptography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptography
Trusting trust:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
Debian bug:
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/kroll/software-transparency-debian-openssl-bug/
or http://tinyurl.com/o28vmhg
Linux backdoor:
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/the-linux-backdoor-attempt-of-2003
or http://tinyurl.com/l3o3e7s
DUAL_EC_DRBG:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/nsa-backdoor/all/
SSL 2.0 flaw:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/ddj-netscape.html
GSM A5/1 flaw:
http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/users/wwwb/cgi-bin/tr-get.cgi/2006/CS/CS-2006-07.pdf
or http://tinyurl.com/3cskp3
Common RSA moduli:
http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/064.pdf
_NSAKEY:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
NSA attacks Tor:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/tor-attacks-nsa-users-online-anonymity
or http://tinyurl.com/onbjqju
Possible Intel RNG backdoor:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/surreptitiously.html
Nonces:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_nonce
Assurance:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/08/assurance.html
I am looking for other examples of known or plausible instances of
intentional vulnerabilities for a paper I am writing on this topic. If
you can think of an example, please post a description and reference in
the comments below. Please explain why you think the vulnerability
could be intentional. Thank you.
-
fourth post
Why the Government Should Help Leakers
In the Information Age, it's easier than ever to steal and publish data.
Corporations and governments have to adjust to their secrets being
exposed, regularly.
When massive amounts of government documents are leaked, journalists
sift through them to determine which pieces of information are
newsworthy, and confer with government agencies over what needs to be
redacted.
Managing this reality is going to require that governments actively
engage with members of the press who receive leaked secrets, helping
them secure those secrets -- even while being unable to prevent them
from publishing. It might seem abhorrent to help those who are seeking
to bring your secrets to light, but it's the best way to ensure that the
things that truly need to be secret remain secret, even as everything
else becomes public.
The WikiLeaks cables serve as an excellent example of how a government
should not deal with massive leaks of classified information.
WikiLeaks has said it asked US authorities for help in determining what
should be redacted before publication of documents, although some
government officials have challenged that statement. WikiLeaks' media
partners did redact many documents, but eventually all 250,000
unredacted cables were released to the world as a result of a mistake.
The damage was nowhere near as serious as government officials initially
claimed, but it had been avoidable.
Fast-forward to today, and we have an even bigger trove of classified
documents. What Edward Snowden took -- "exfiltrated" is the National
Security Agency term -- dwarfs the State Department cables, and contains
considerably more important secrets. But again, the US government is
doing nothing to prevent a massive data dump.
The government engages with the press on individual stories. The
"Guardian," the "Washington Post," and the "New York Times" are all
redacting the original Snowden documents based on discussions with the
government. This isn't new. The US press regularly consults with the
government before publishing something that might be damaging. In 2006,
the "New York Times" consulted with both the NSA and the Bush
administration before publishing Mark Klein's whistleblowing about the
NSA's eavesdropping on AT&T trunk circuits. In all these cases, the goal
is to minimize actual harm to US security while ensuring the press can
still report stories in the public interest, even if the government
doesn't want it to.
In today's world of reduced secrecy, whistleblowing as civil
disobedience, and massive document exfiltrations, negotiations over
individual stories aren't enough. The government needs to develop a
protocol to actively help news organizations expose their secrets safely
and responsibly.
Here's what should have happened as soon as Snowden's whistleblowing
became public. The government should have told the reporters and
publications with the classified documents something like this: "OK, you
have them. We know that we can't undo the leak. But please let us help.
Let us help you secure the documents as you write your stories, and
securely dispose of the documents when you're done."
The people who have access to the Snowden documents say they don't want
them to be made public in their raw form or to get in the hands of rival
governments. But accidents happen, and reporters are not trained in
military secrecy practices.
Copies of some of the Snowden documents are being circulated to
journalists and others. With each copy, each person, each day, there's a
greater chance that, once again, someone will make a mistake and some --
or all -- of the raw documents will appear on the Internet. A formal
system of working with whistleblowers could prevent that.
I'm sure the suggestion sounds odious to a government that is actively
engaging in a war on whistleblowers, and that views Snowden as a
criminal and the reporters writing these stories as "helping the
terrorists." But it makes sense. Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain
compares this to plea bargaining.
The police regularly negotiate lenient sentences or probation for
confessed criminals in order to convict more important criminals. They
make deals with all sorts of unsavory people, giving them benefits they
don't deserve, because the result is a greater good.
In the Snowden case, an agreement would safeguard the most important of
NSA's secrets from other nations' intelligence agencies. It would help
ensure that the truly secret information not be exposed. It would
protect US interests.
Why would reporters agree to this? Two reasons. One, they actually do
want these documents secured while they look for stories to publish. And
two, it would be a public demonstration of that desire.
Why wouldn't the government just collect all the documents under the
pretense of securing them and then delete them? For the same reason they
don't renege on plea bargains: No one would trust them next time. And,
of course, because smart reporters will probably keep encrypted backups
under their own control.
We're nowhere near the point where this system could be put into
practice, but it's worth thinking about how it could work. The
government would need to establish a semi-independent group, called,
say, a Leak Management unit, which could act as an intermediary. Since
it would be isolated from the agencies that were the source of the leak,
its officials would be less vested and -- this is important -- less
angry over the leak. Over time, it would build a reputation, develop
protocols that reporters could rely on. Leaks will be more common in the
future, but they'll still be rare. Expecting each agency to develop
expertise in this process is unrealistic.
If there were sufficient trust between the press and the government,
this could work. And everyone would benefit.
This essay previously appeared on CNN.com.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/04/opinion/schneier-leakers-government/index.html
or http://tinyurl.com/jwb6lbw
WikiLeaks story:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/all-leaked-u-s-cables-were-made-available-online-as-wikileaks-splintered/
or http://tinyurl.com/3mugz7j
http://www.salon.com/2011/09/02/wikileaks_28/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/31/us-usa-wikileaks-manning-damage-analysis-idUSBRE96U00420130731
or http://tinyurl.com/o79sfsl
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-6962209.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30WikiLeaks-t.html
Mark Klein story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/us/nationalspecial3/13nsa.html
The world of reduced secrecy:
https://www.schneier.com/essay-449.html
Whistleblowing as civil disobedience:
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/07/19/edward-snowden-whistleblower.html
or http://tinyurl.com/jwbcgom
Software to facilitate massive document exfiltrations:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/securedrop.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
NSA/Snowden News
Jack Goldsmith argues that we need the NSA to surveil the Internet not
for terrorism reasons, but for cyberespionage and cybercrime reasons.
http://www.newrepublic.com/node/115002/
Daniel Gallington argues -- the headline has nothing to do with the
content -- that the balance between surveillance and privacy is about
right.
http://mobile.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/10/23/edward-snowden-could-have-raised-nsa-spying-concerns-without-going-to-media
or http://tinyurl.com/lksejka
Good summary from the "London Review of Books" on what the NSA can and
cannot do.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n20/daniel-soar/how-to-get-ahead-at-the-nsa
"A Template for Reporting Government Surveillance News Stories." This
is from 2006, but it's even more true today.
http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/06/template_for_ne.html
or http://tinyurl.com/gpsyb
We've changed administrations -- we've changed political parties -- but
nothing has changed.
There's a story that Edward Snowden successfully socially engineered
other NSA employees into giving him their passwords.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9A703020131108?irpc=932
This talk by Dan Geer explains the NSA mindset of "collect everything":
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/dan_geer_explai.html
The whole essay is well worth reading.
http://geer.tinho.net/geer.uncc.9x13.txt
This "New York Times" story on the NSA is very good, and contains lots
of little tidbits of new information gleaned from the Snowden documents.
"The agency's Dishfire database -- nothing happens without a code word
at the N.S.A. -- stores years of text messages from around the world,
just in case. Its Tracfin collection accumulates gigabytes of credit
card purchases. The fellow pretending to send a text message at an
Internet cafe in Jordan may be using an N.S.A. technique code-named
Polarbreeze to tap into nearby computers. The Russian businessman who is
socially active on the web might just become food for Snacks, the
acronym-mad agency's Social Network Analysis Collaboration Knowledge
Services, which figures out the personnel hierarchies of organizations
from texts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/world/no-morsel-too-minuscule-for-all-consuming-nsa.html
or http://tinyurl.com/qdz55dk
This "Guardian" story is related. It looks like both the "New York
Times" and the "Guardian" wrote separate stories about the same source
material.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/02/nsa-portrait-total-surveillance
or http://tinyurl.com/q4pa5ff
"New York Times" reporter Scott Shane gave a 20-minute interview on
"Democracy Now" on the NSA and his reporting.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/11/4/inside_the_electronic_omnivore_new_leaks
or http://tinyurl.com/mt9c6z4
"Der Spiegel" is reporting that the GCHQ used QUANTUMINSERT to direct
users to fake LinkedIn and Slashdot pages run by -- this code name is
not in the article -- FOXACID servers. There's not a lot technically
new in the article, but we do get some information about popularity and
jargon.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ghcq-targets-engineers-with-fake-linkedin-pages-a-932821.html
or http://tinyurl.com/k3lb6qd
Slashdot has reacted to the story.
https://slashdot.org/topic/bi/gchq-responds-to-slashdot-linkedin-hack/
or http://tinyurl.com/mct8hrh
I wrote about QUANTUMINSERT, and the whole infection process, here.
https://www.schneier.com/essay-455.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
The Trajectories of Government and Corporate Surveillance
Historically, surveillance was difficult and expensive.
Over the decades, as technology advanced, surveillance became easier and
easier. Today, we find ourselves in a world of ubiquitous surveillance,
where everything is collected, saved, searched, correlated and analyzed.
But while technology allowed for an increase in both corporate and
government surveillance, the private and public sectors took very
different paths to get there. The former always collected information
about everyone, but over time, collected more and more of it, while the
latter always collected maximal information, but over time, collected it
on more and more people.
Corporate surveillance has been on a path from minimal to maximal
information. Corporations always collected information on everyone they
could, but in the past they didn't collect very much of it and only held
it as long as necessary. When surveillance information was expensive to
collect and store, companies made do with as little as possible.
Telephone companies collected long-distance calling information because
they needed it for billing purposes. Credit cards collected only the
information about their customers' transactions that they needed for
billing. Stores hardly ever collected information about their customers,
maybe some personal preferences, or name-and-address for advertising
purposes. Even Google, back in the beginning, collected far less
information about its users than it does today.
As technology improved, corporations were able to collect more. As the
cost of data storage became cheaper, they were able to save more data
and for a longer time. And as big data analysis tools became more
powerful, it became profitable to save more. Today, almost everything is
being saved by someone -- probably forever.
Examples are everywhere. Internet companies like Google, Facebook,
Amazon and Apple collect everything we do online at their sites.
Third-party cookies allow those companies, and others, to collect data
on us wherever we are on the Internet. Store affinity cards allow
merchants to track our purchases. CCTV and aerial surveillance combined
with automatic face recognition allow companies to track our movements;
so does your cell phone. The Internet will facilitate even more
surveillance, by more corporations for more purposes.
On the government side, surveillance has been on a path from
individually targeted to broadly collected. When surveillance was manual
and expensive, it could only be justified in extreme cases. The warrant
process limited police surveillance, and resource restraints and the
risk of discovery limited national intelligence surveillance. Specific
individuals were targeted for surveillance, and maximal information was
collected on them alone.
As technology improved, the government was able to implement
ever-broadening surveillance. The National Security Agency could surveil
groups -- the Soviet government, the Chinese diplomatic corps, etc. --
not just individuals. Eventually, they could spy on entire
communications trunks.
Now, instead of watching one person, the NSA can monitor "three hops"
away from that person -- an ever widening network of people not directly
connected to the person under surveillance. Using sophisticated tools,
the NSA can surveil broad swaths of the Internet and phone network.
Governments have always used their authority to piggyback on corporate
surveillance. Why should they go through the trouble of developing their
own surveillance programs when they could just ask corporations for the
data? For example we just learned that the NSA collects e-mail, IM and
social networking contact lists for millions of Internet users worldwide.
But as corporations started collecting more information on populations,
governments started demanding that data. Through National Security
Letters, the FBI can surveil huge groups of people without obtaining a
warrant. Through secret agreements, the NSA can monitor the entire
Internet and telephone networks.
This is a huge part of the public-private surveillance partnership.
The result of all this is we're now living in a world where both
corporations and governments have us all under pretty much constant
surveillance.
Data is a byproduct of the information society. Every interaction we
have with a computer creates a transaction record, and we interact with
computers hundreds of times a day. Even if we don't use a computer --
buying something in person with cash, say -- the merchant uses a
computer, and the data flows into the same system. Everything we do
leaves a data shadow, and that shadow is constantly under surveillance.
Data is also a byproduct of information society socialization, whether
it be e-mail, instant messages or conversations on Facebook.
Conversations that used to be ephemeral are now recorded, and we are all
leaving digital footprints wherever we go.
Moore's law has made computing cheaper. All of us have made computing
ubiquitous. And because computing produces data, and that data equals
surveillance, we have created a world of ubiquitous surveillance.
Now we need to figure out what to do about it. This is more than reining
in the NSA or fining a corporation for the occasional data abuse. We
need to decide whether our data is a shared societal resource, a part of
us that is inherently ours by right, or a private good to be bought and
sold.
Writing in the "Guardian," Chris Huhn said that "information is power,
and the necessary corollary is that privacy is freedom." How this
interplay between power and freedom play out in the information age is
still to be determined.
This essay previously appeared on CNN.com.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/16/opinion/schneier-surveillance-trajectories/index.html
or http://tinyurl.com/mdwfo6k
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/the_trajectorie.html
Ubiquitous surveillance:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/16/opinion/schneier-internet-surveillance
Three hop analysis:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/nsa-admits-it-analyzes-more-peoples-data-previously-revealed/67287
or http://tinyurl.com/nseaodw
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/you-may-already-be-a-winner-in-nsas-three-degrees-surveillance-sweepstakes
or http://tinyurl.com/lvz63g5
The public-private surveillance partnership:
https://www.schneier.com/essay-436.html
Chris Huhn's comment:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/06/prism-tempora-cabinet-surveillance-state
or http://tinyurl.com/numre3y
Richard Stallman's comments on the subject:
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/stallman20131020
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
A Fraying of the Public/Private Surveillance Partnership
The public/private surveillance partnership between the NSA and
corporate data collectors is starting to fray. The reason is sunlight.
The publicity resulting from the Snowden documents has made companies
think twice before allowing the NSA access to their users' and
customers' data.
Pre-Snowden, there was no downside to cooperating with the NSA. If the
NSA asked you for copies of all your Internet traffic, or to put
backdoors into your security software, you could assume that your
cooperation would forever remain secret. To be fair, not every
corporation cooperated willingly. Some fought in court. But it seems
that a lot of them, telcos and backbone providers especially, were happy
to give the NSA unfettered access to everything. Post-Snowden, this is
changing. Now that many companies' cooperation has become public,
they're facing a PR backlash from customers and users who are upset that
their data is flowing to the NSA. And this is costing those companies
business.
How much is unclear. In July, right after the PRISM revelations, the
Cloud Security Alliance reported that US cloud companies could lose $35
billion over the next three years, mostly due to losses of foreign
sales. Surely that number has increased as outrage over NSA spying
continues to build in Europe and elsewhere. There is no similar report
for software sales, although I have attended private meetings where
several large US software companies complained about the loss of foreign
sales. On the hardware side, IBM is losing business in China. The US
telecom companies are also suffering: AT&T is losing business worldwide.
This is the new reality. The rules of secrecy are different, and
companies have to assume that their responses to NSA data demands will
become public. This means there is now a significant cost to
cooperating, and a corresponding benefit to fighting.
Over the past few months, more companies have woken up to the fact that
the NSA is basically treating them as adversaries, and are responding as
such. In mid-October, it became public that the NSA was collecting
e-mail address books and buddy lists from Internet users logging into
different service providers. Yahoo, which didn't encrypt those user
connections by default, allowed the NSA to collect much more of its data
than Google, which did. That same day, Yahoo announced that it would
implement SSL encryption by default for all of its users. Two weeks
later, when it became public that the NSA was collecting data on Google
users by eavesdropping on the company's trunk connections between its
data centers, Google announced that it would encrypt those connections.
We recently learned that Yahoo fought a government order to turn over
data. Lavabit fought its order as well. Apple is now tweaking the
government. And we think better of those companies because of it.
Now Lavabit, which closed down its e-mail service rather than comply
with the NSA's request for the master keys that would compromise all of
its customers, has teamed with Silent Circle to develop a secure e-mail
standard that is resistant to these kinds of tactics.
The Snowden documents made it clear how much the NSA relies on
corporations to eavesdrop on the Internet. The NSA didn't build a
massive Internet eavesdropping system from scratch. It noticed that the
corporate world was already eavesdropping on every Internet user --
surveillance is the business model of the Internet, after all -- and
simply got copies for itself.
Now, that secret ecosystem is breaking down. Supreme Court Justice
Louis Brandeis wrote about transparency, saying "Sunlight is said to be
the best of disinfectants." In this case, it seems to be working.
These developments will only help security. Remember that while Edward
Snowden has given us a window into the NSA's activities, these sorts of
tactics are probably also used by other intelligence services around the
world. And today's secret NSA programs become tomorrow's PhD theses, and
the next day's criminal hacker tools. It's impossible to build an
Internet where the good guys can eavesdrop, and the bad guys cannot. We
have a choice between an Internet that is vulnerable to all attackers,
or an Internet that is safe from all attackers. And a safe and secure
Internet is in everyone's best interests, including the US's.
This essay previously appeared on TheAtlantic.com.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/a-fraying-of-the-public-private-surveillance-partnership/281289/
or http://tinyurl.com/lpgv6lc
The public/private surveillance partnership:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/the_publicpriva_1.html or
http://tinyurl.com/lr66rkp
PRISM:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html
or http://tinyurl.com/mm3ttqt
Increased outrage outside the US:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/28/report-nsa-spain/3284609/
or http://tinyurl.com/mep8m8y
Losses due to NSA spying:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/07/nsa-snooping-could-cost-u-s-tech-companies-35-billion-over-three-years/
or http://tinyurl.com/laba7fu
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/wolf-richter-nsa-revelations-kill-ibm-hardware-sales-in-china.html
or http://tinyurl.com/meqjezj
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304073204579167873091999730
or http://tinyurl.com/lrkup9x
New rules of secrecy:
https://www.schneier.com/essay-449.html
The NSA and tech companies as adversaries:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/01/google-yahoo-nsa-surveillance-reform
or http://tinyurl.com/leagmzv
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/technology/angry-over-us-surveillance-tech-giants-bolster-defenses.html
or http://tinyurl.com/pb7v45h
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/08/stop-clumping-tech-companies-in-with-government-in-the-surveillance-scandals-they-may-be-at-war/
or http://tinyurl.com/os3pv2n
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/yahoo-lawsuit-nsa-surveillance-requests
or http://tinyurl.com/nky7qud
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57610342-83/apple-google-microsoft-unite-against-nsa-spying-program/
or http://tinyurl.com/mv7bker
http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-google-team-sue-federal-government-over-nsa-180635058.html
or http://tinyurl.com/oevlmea
http://rt.com/news/yahoo-data-collection-court-case-165/
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130924/18051224648/lavabit-asks-court-to-unseal-least-some-its-case-so-others-can-submit-amici-briefs.shtml
or http://tinyurl.com/k72a3k6
http://boingboing.net/2013/11/05/apple-hides-a-patriot-act-bust.html
Yahoo announce3s SSL by default:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/14/yahoo-to-make-ssl-encryption-the-default-for-webmail-users-finally/
or http://tinyurl.com/kdthaoj
Lavabit:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/lavabit_e-mail.html
Silent Circle's new e-mail system:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/530582/silent_circle_lavabit_unite_dark_mail_encrypted_email_project/
or http://tinyurl.com/letnnmw
Brandeis quote:
http://www.law.louisville.edu/library/collections/brandeis/node/196
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Book Review: "Cyber War Will Not Take Place"
Cyber war is possibly the most dangerous buzzword of the Internet era.
The fear-inducing rhetoric surrounding it is being used to justify major
changes in the way the Internet is organized, governed, and constructed.
And in "Cyber War Will Not Take Place," Thomas Rid convincingly argues
that cyber war is not a compelling threat. Rid is one of the leading
cyber war skeptics in Europe, and although he doesn't argue that war
won't extend into cyberspace, he says that cyberspace's role in war is
more limited than doomsayers want us to believe. His argument against
cyber war is lucid and methodical. He divides "offensive and violent
political acts" in cyberspace into: sabotage, espionage, and subversion.
These categories are larger than cyberspace, of course, but Rid spends
considerable time analyzing their strengths and limitations within
cyberspace. The details are complicated, but his end conclusion is that
many of these types of attacks cannot be defined as acts of war, and any
future war won't involve many of these types of attacks.
None of this is meant to imply that cyberspace is safe. Threats of all
sorts fill cyberspace, but not threats of war. As such, the policies to
defend against them are different. While hackers and criminal threats
get all the headlines, more worrisome are the threats from governments
seeking to consolidate their power. I have long argued that controlling
the Internet has become critical for totalitarian states, and their four
broad tools of surveillance, censorship, propaganda and use control have
legitimate commercial applications, and are also employed by democracies.
A lot of the problem here is of definition. There isn't broad agreement
as to what constitutes cyber war, and this confusion plays into the
hands of those hyping its threat. If everything from Chinese espionage
to Russian criminal extortion to activist disruption falls under the
cyber war umbrella, then it only makes sense to put more of the Internet
under government -- and thus military -- control. Rid's book is a
compelling counter-argument to this approach.
Rid's final chapter is an essay unto itself, and lays out his vision as
to how we should deal with threats in cyberspace. For policymakers who
won't sit through an entire book, this is the chapter I would urge them
to read. Arms races are dangerous and destabilizing, and we're in the
early years of a cyberwar arms race that's being fueled by fear and
ignorance. This book is a cogent counterpoint to the doomsayers and the
profiteers, and should be required reading for anyone concerned about
security in cyberspace.
This book review previously appeared in Europe's World.
http://europesworld.org/2013/10/01/cyber-war-will-not-take-place/
Thomas Rid, "Cyber War Will Not Take Place," Oxford University Press, 2013.
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Understanding the Threats in Cyberspace
The primary difficulty of cyber security isn't technology -- it's
policy. The Internet mirrors real-world society, which makes security
policy online as complicated as it is in the real world. Protecting
critical infrastructure against cyber-attack is just one of cyberspace's
many security challenges, so it's important to understand them all
before any one of them can be solved.
The list of bad actors in cyberspace is long, and spans a wide range of
motives and capabilities. At the extreme end there's cyberwar:
destructive actions by governments during a war. When government
policymakers like David Omand think of cyber-attacks, that's what comes
to mind. Cyberwar is conducted by capable and well-funded groups and
involves military operations against both military and civilian targets.
Along much the same lines are non-nation state actors who conduct
terrorist operations. Although less capable and well-funded, they are
often talked about in the same breath as true cyberwar.
Much more common are the domestic and international criminals who run
the gamut from lone individuals to organized crime. They can be very
capable and well-funded and will continue to inflict significant
economic damage.
Threats from peacetime governments have been seen increasingly in the
news. The US worries about Chinese espionage against Western targets,
and we're also seeing US surveillance of pretty much everyone in the
world, including Americans inside the US. The National Security Agency
(NSA) is probably the most capable and well-funded espionage
organization in the world, and we're still learning about the full
extent of its sometimes illegal operations.
Hacktivists are a different threat. Their actions range from
Internet-age acts of civil disobedience to the inflicting of actual
damage. This is hard to generalize about because the individuals and
groups in this category vary so much in skill, funding and motivation.
Hackers falling under the "anonymous" aegis -- it really isn't correct
to call them a group -- come under this category, as does WikiLeaks.
Most of these attackers are outside the organization, although
whistleblowing -- the civil disobedience of the information age --
generally involves insiders like Edward Snowden.
This list of potential network attackers isn't exhaustive. Depending on
who you are and what your organization does, you might be also concerned
with espionage cyber-attacks by the media, rival corporations or even
the corporations we entrust with our data.
The issue here, and why it affects policy, is that protecting against
these various threats can lead to contradictory requirements. In the US,
the NSA's post-9/11 mission to protect the country from terrorists has
transformed it into a domestic surveillance organization. The NSA's need
to protect its own information systems from outside attack opened it up
to attacks from within. Do the corporate security products we buy to
protect ourselves against cybercrime contain backdoors that allow for
government spying? European countries may condemn the US for spying on
its own citizens, but do they do the same thing?
All these questions are especially difficult because military and
security organizations along with corporations tend to hype particular
threats. For example, cyberwar and cyberterrorism are greatly overblown
as threats -- because they result in massive government programs with
huge budgets and power -- while cybercrime is largely downplayed.
We need greater transparency, oversight and accountability on both the
government and corporate sides before we can move forward. With the
secrecy that surrounds cyber-attack and cyberdefense it's hard to be
optimistic.
This essay previously appeared in "Europe's World."
http://europesworld.org/commentaries/understanding-the-threats-in-cyberspace/
or http://tinyurl.com/msedsut
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
News
Ed Felten makes a strong argument that a court order is exactly the
same thing as an insider attack:
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/a-court-order-is-an-insider-attack/
or http://tinyurl.com/lyah32e
This is why designing Lavabit to be resistant to court order would have
been the right thing to do, and why we should all demand systems that
are designed in this way.
http://boingboing.net/2013/10/15/why-email-services-should-be-c.html
There seems to be a bunch of research into uniquely identifying cell
phones through unique analog characteristics of the various embedded
sensors. These sorts of things could replace cookies as surveillance tools.
http://www.hotmobile.org/2014/papers/posters/Hotmobile_poster_Dey.pdf or
http://tinyurl.com/movpmgo
http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/10/10/stanford-researchers-discover-alarming-method-for-phone-tracking-fingerprinting-through-sensor-flaws/
or http://tinyurl.com/kgru3xo
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/10/11/1231240/sensor-characteristics-uniquely-identify-individual-phones
or http://tinyurl.com/ls9bj7p
http://www.metafilter.com/132752/Leveraging-Imperfections-of-Sensors-for-Fingerprinting-Smartphones
or http://tinyurl.com/khz3g3n
Several versions of D-Link router firmware contain a backdoor. Just set
the browser's user agent string to "xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide," and
you're in. (Hint, remove the number and read it backwards.) It was
probably put there for debugging purposes, but has all sorts of
applications for surveillance.
http://www.devttys0.com/2013/10/reverse-engineering-a-d-link-backdoor/
or http://tinyurl.com/kulv2oo
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security/backdoor-found-in-d-link-router-firmware-code-228725
or http://tinyurl.com/o4oarkn
There are open-source programs available to replace the firmware:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/networking/review-6-slick-open-source-routers-206810
or http://tinyurl.com/czjcnpw
The new iPhone has a motion sensor chip, and that opens up new
opportunities for surveillance.
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/10/the-trojan-horse-of-the-latest-iphone-with-the-m7-coprocessor-we-all-become-qs-activity-trackers/
or http://tinyurl.com/lgszxod
Slashdot asks whether I can be trusted:
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/10/22/1416201/ask-slashdot-can-bruce-schneier-be-trusted
or http://tinyurl.com/ltl6x4j
DARPA is looking for a fully automated network defense system, and has a
contest:
http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2013/10/22.aspx
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/23/darpa-announces-2-million-prize-in-self-patching-software-competition/
or http://tinyurl.com/kbyy2wy
http://gizmodo.com/darpa-will-give-you-2-million-to-build-hacker-proof-de-1451009416
or http://tinyurl.com/ou2d9nv
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/35211/darpas-new-cyber-grand-challenge-the-development-of-selfhealing-software/
or http://tinyurl.com/ls6uuvz
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/24/0242252/darpa-issues-2mil-cyber-grand-challenge
or http://tinyurl.com/njkjxd6
http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/1ozoiy/darpas_cyber_grand_challenge_cyber_defense/
or http://tinyurl.com/q4eyuz7
Cognitive biases about violence as a negotiating tactic: interesting paper.
http://www.academia.edu/4770419/The_Credibility_Paradox_Violence_as_a_Double-Edged_Sword_in_International_Politics_International_Studies_Quarterly_December_2013_
or http://tinyurl.com/nymrbuz
This article talks about applications of close-in surveillance using
your phone's Wi-Fi in retail, but the possibilities are endless.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/19/how-stores-use-your-phones-wifi-to-track-your-shopping-habits/
or http://tinyurl.com/p6rz7d4
Basically, the system is using the MAC address to identify individual
devices. Another article on the system is here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
or http://tinyurl.com/nh968hw
Good story of badBIOS, a really nasty piece of malware. The weirdest
part is how it uses ultrasonic sound to jump air gaps.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mysterious-mac-and-pc-malware-that-jumps-airgaps/
or http://tinyurl.com/q3e4zgj
I'm not sure what to make of this. When I first read it, I thought it
was a hoax. But enough others are taking it seriously that I think it's
a real story. I don't know whether the facts are real, and I haven't
seen anything about what this malware actually does.
http://boingboing.net/2013/10/31/badbios-airgap-jumping-malwar.html
http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/1pm66y/meet_badbios_the_mysterious_mac_and_pc_malware/
or http://tinyurl.com/oyqa9m8
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6654663
http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/10/badbios-features-explained.html
A debunking:
http://www.rootwyrm.com/2013/11/the-badbios-analysis-is-wrong/
This story of the bomb squad at the Boston marathon interesting reading,
but I'm left wanting more. What are the lessons here? How can we do
this better next time? Clearly we won't be able to anticipate bombings;
even Israel can't do that. We have to get better at responding.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/10/boston-police-bomb-squad/all/
or http://tinyurl.com/m6hxcya
Here's a demonstration of the US government's capabilities to monitor
the public Internet. Former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden was on
the Acela train between New York and Washington DC, taking press
interviews on the phone. Someone nearby overheard the conversation, and
started tweeting about it. Within 15 or so minutes, someone somewhere
noticed the tweets, and informed someone who knew Hayden. That person
called Hayden on his cell phone and, presumably, told him to shut up.
Nothing covert here; the tweets were public.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/former-spy-chief-overheard-acela-twitter
or http://tinyurl.com/mgjg2be
I don't think this was a result of the NSA monitoring the Internet. I
think this was some public relations office -- probably the one that is
helping General Alexander respond to all the Snowden stories -- who is
searching the public Twitter feed for, among other things, Hayden's
name. Even so: wow.
This elliptic-curve crypto primer is well-written and very good.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-primer-on-elliptic-curve-cryptography/
or http://tinyurl.com/qznvhd4
The wings of the *Goniurellia tridens* fruit fly have images of an ant
on them, to deceive predators: "When threatened, the fly flashes its
wings to give the appearance of ants walking back and forth. The
predator gets confused and the fly zips off."
http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/science/fruit-fly-with-the-wings-of-beauty
or http://tinyurl.com/cnccw2k
Interesting article on risk-based authentication. I like the idea of
giving each individual login attempt a risk score, based on the
characteristics of the attempt.
http://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/2013/10/30/risk-based-authentication-a-primer/
or http://tinyurl.com/l5t2mh4
This bizarre essay argues that online gambling is a strategic national
threat because terrorists could use it to launder money.
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/column-online-gambling-is-a-strategic-national-threat/2151317
or http://tinyurl.com/mw3x3sc
I'm impressed with the massive fear resonating.
Adobe lost 150 million customer passwords. Even worse, it had a pretty
dumb cryptographic hash system protecting those passwords.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/07/adobe-password-leak-can-check
or http://tinyurl.com/odowevq
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/11/04/anatomy-of-a-password-disaster-adobes-giant-sized-cryptographic-blunder/
or http://tinyurl.com/n2fpgxj
http://xkcd.com/1286/
Microsoft has announced plans to retire SHA-1 by 2016. I think this is a
good move.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/microsoft_retir.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
SecureDrop
SecureDrop is an open-source whistleblower support system, originally
written by Aaron Swartz and now run by the Freedom of the Press
Foundation. The first instance of this system was named StrongBox and
is being run by "The New Yorker." To further add to the naming
confusion, Aaron Swartz called the system DeadDrop when he wrote the code.
I participated in a detailed security audit of the StrongBox
implementation, along with some great researchers from the University of
Washington and Jake Applebaum. The problems we found were largely
procedural, and things that the Freedom of the Press Foundation are
working to fix.
Freedom of the Press Foundation is not running any instances of
SecureDrop. It has about a half dozen major news organization lined up,
and will be helping them install their own starting the first week of
November. So hopefully any would-be whistleblowers will soon have their
choice of news organizations to securely communicate with.
Strong technical whistleblower protection is essential, especially given
President Obama's war on whistleblowers. I hope this system is broadly
implemented and extensively used.
SecureDrop:
https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop
https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/10/freedom-press-foundation-launches-securedrop
or http://tinyurl.com/mujzg8j
StrongBox:
http://www.newyorker.com/strongbox/
DeadDrop:
http://deaddrop.github.io/
Our security audit:
http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~aczeskis/research/pubs/UW-CSE-13-08-02.PDF
or http://tinyurl.com/prf7rxv
Obama's war on whistleblowers:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/obamas-whistleblowers-stuxnet-leaks-drones
or http://tinyurl.com/buqm984
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130722/01430523882/architect-obamas-war-whistleblowers-its-good-to-hang-admiral-once-while-as-example.shtml
or http://tinyurl.com/lz28uwl
https://www.cpj.org/reports/2013/10/obama-and-the-press-us-leaks-surveillance-post-911.php
or http://tinyurl.com/l3vx8k5
The US government sets up secure indoor tents for the president and
other officials to deal with classified material while traveling abroad.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/barack-obamas-portable-secrecy-tent-some-assembly-required-20131111-2xb0l.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Dry Ice Bombs at LAX
The news story about the guy who left dry ice bombs in restricted areas
of LAX is really weird.
I can't get worked up over it, though. Dry ice bombs are a harmless
prank. I set off a bunch of them when I was in college, although I used
liquid nitrogen, because I was impatient -- and they're harmless. I
know of someone who set a few off over the summer, just for fun. They
do make a very satisfying boom.
Having them set off in a secure airport area doesn't illustrate any new
vulnerabilities. We already know that trusted people can subvert
security systems. So what?
I've done a bunch of press interviews on this. One radio announcer
really didn't like my nonchalance. He really wanted me to complain
about the lack of cameras at LAX, and was unhappy when I pointed out
that we didn't need cameras to catch this guy.
I like my kicker quote in this article:
Various people, including former Los Angeles Police Chief
William Bratton, have called LAX the No. 1 terrorist target on
the West Coast. But while an Algerian man discovered with a
bomb at the Canadian border in 1999 was sentenced to 37 years
in prison in connection with a plot to cause damage at LAX,
Schneier said that assessment by Bratton is probably not true.
"Where can you possibly get that data?" he said. "I don't think
terrorists respond to opinion polls about how juicy targets
are."
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lax-dry-ice-bombs-20131014,0,1147428.story
or http://tinyurl.com/lbjxre8
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-dry-ice-bomb-suspect-protect-dog-20131018,0,3318134.story
or http://tinyurl.com/lqchfnz
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-1019-dryice-bombs-20131019,0,264254.story
or http://tinyurl.com/jvuqh36
http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20131019/for-employees-lax-airport-security-is-built-on-trust
or http://tinyurl.com/k3duee6
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Schneier News
In Spring semester, I'm running a reading group -- which seems to be a
formal variant of a study group -- at Harvard Law School on "Security,
Power, and the Internet. I would like a good mix of people, so non law
students and non Harvard students are both welcome to sign up.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/curriculum/catalog/index.html?o=66620
or http://tinyurl.com/mplc9vc
Various security articles about me (or with good quotes by me):
http://fedscoop.com/nsa-murky-relationship-contractors-government-secrets-journalism/
or http://tinyurl.com/ohj85xr
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131105/11325125139/
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243865/Security_expert_seeks_to_make_surveillance_costly_again
or http://tinyurl.com/jwdtc4n
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/11/internet-after-snowden or
http://tinyurl.com/l4utwnp
My talk at the IETF Vancouver meeting on NSA and surveillance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV71hhEpQ20
Press articles about me and the IEFT meeting:
http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerability/schneier-make-wide-scale-surveillance-to/240163668
or http://tinyurl.com/ppuek4e
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/521306/time-for-internet-engineers-to-fight-back-against-the-surveillance-internet/
or http://tinyurl.com/pouxmr4
http://www.ip-watch.org/2013/11/07/expert-us-benign-dictatorship-of-the-net-is-over-age-of-encryption-begins/
or http://tinyurl.com/kaq7gj2
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21589383-stung-revelations-ubiquitous-surveillance-and-compromised-software
or http://tinyurl.com/krs7n7k
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=15916
Other video interviews:
http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/interview-with-bruce-schneier
or http://tinyurl.com/n4mfuqc
http://connecttheworld.blogs.cnn.com/tag/bruce-schneier/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar67N94NYr0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az-jXeCswCg&feature=youtu.be&a
http://www.channel4.com/news/nsa-security-row-the-key-questions
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
The Battle for Power on the Internet
We're in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace. On one
side are the traditional, organized, institutional powers such as
governments and large multinational corporations. On the other are the
distributed and nimble: grassroots movements, dissident groups, hackers,
and criminals. Initially, the Internet empowered the second side. It
gave them a place to coordinate and communicate efficiently, and made
them seem unbeatable. But now, the more traditional institutional powers
are winning, and winning big. How these two sides fare in the long term,
and the fate of the rest of us who don't fall into either group, is an
open question -- and one vitally important to the future of the Internet.
In the Internet's early days, there was a lot of talk about its "natural
laws" -- how it would upend traditional power blocks, empower the
masses, and spread freedom throughout the world. The international
nature of the Internet circumvented national laws. Anonymity was easy.
Censorship was impossible. Police were clueless about cybercrime. And
bigger changes seemed inevitable. Digital cash would undermine national
sovereignty. Citizen journalism would topple traditional media,
corporate PR, and political parties. Easy digital copying would destroy
the traditional movie and music industries. Web marketing would allow
even the smallest companies to compete against corporate giants. It
really would be a new world order.
This was a utopian vision, but some of it did come to pass. Internet
marketing has transformed commerce. The entertainment industries have
been transformed by things like MySpace and YouTube, and are now more
open to outsiders. Mass media has changed dramatically, and some of the
most influential people in the media have come from the blogging world.
There are new ways to organize politically and run elections.
Crowdfunding has made tens of thousands of projects possible to finance,
and crowdsourcing made more types of projects possible. Facebook and
Twitter really did help topple governments.
But that is just one side of the Internet's disruptive character. The
Internet has emboldened traditional power as well.
On the corporate side, power is consolidating, a result of two current
trends in computing. First, the rise of cloud computing means that we no
longer have control of our data. Our e-mail, photos, calendars, address
books, messages, and documents are on servers belonging to Google,
Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. And second, we are increasingly
accessing our data using devices that we have much less control over:
iPhones, iPads, Android phones, Kindles, ChromeBooks, and so on. Unlike
traditional operating systems, those devices are controlled much more
tightly by the vendors, who limit what software can run, what they can
do, how they're updated, and so on. Even Windows 8 and Apple's Mountain
Lion operating system are heading in the direction of more vendor control.
I have previously characterized this model of computing as "feudal."
Users pledge their allegiance to more powerful companies who, in turn,
promise to protect them from both sysadmin duties and security threats.
It's a metaphor that's rich in history and in fiction, and a model
that's increasingly permeating computing today.
Medieval feudalism was a hierarchical political system, with obligations
in both directions. Lords offered protection, and vassals offered
service. The lord-peasant relationship was similar, with a much greater
power differential. It was a response to a dangerous world.
Feudal security consolidates power in the hands of the few. Internet
companies, like lords before them, act in their own self-interest. They
use their relationship with us to increase their profits, sometimes at
our expense. They act arbitrarily. They make mistakes. They're
deliberately -- and incidentally -- changing social norms. Medieval
feudalism gave the lords vast powers over the landless peasants; we're
seeing the same thing on the Internet.
It's not all bad, of course. We, especially those of us who are not
technical, like the convenience, redundancy, portability, automation,
and shareability of vendor-managed devices. We like cloud backup. We
like automatic updates. We like not having to deal with security
ourselves. We like that Facebook just works -- from any device, anywhere.
Government power is also increasing on the Internet. There is more
government surveillance than ever before. There is more government
censorship than ever before. There is more government propaganda, and an
increasing number of governments are controlling what their users can
and cannot do on the Internet. Totalitarian governments are embracing a
growing "cyber sovereignty" movement to further consolidate their power.
And the cyberwar arms race is on, pumping an enormous amount of money
into cyber-weapons and consolidated cyber-defenses, further increasing
government power.
In many cases, the interests of corporate and government powers are
aligning. Both corporations and governments benefit from ubiquitous
surveillance, and the NSA is using Google, Facebook, Verizon, and others
to get access to data it couldn't otherwise. The entertainment industry
is looking to governments to enforce its antiquated business models.
Commercial security equipment from companies like BlueCoat and Sophos is
being used by oppressive governments to surveil and censor their
citizens. The same facial recognition technology that Disney uses in its
theme parks can also identify protesters in China and Occupy Wall Street
activists in New York. Think of it as a public/private surveillance
partnership.
What happened? How, in those early Internet years, did we get the future
so wrong?
The truth is that technology magnifies power in general, but rates of
adoption are different. The unorganized, the distributed, the marginal,
the dissidents, the powerless, the criminal: they can make use of new
technologies very quickly. And when those groups discovered the
Internet, suddenly they had power. But later, when the already-powerful
big institutions finally figured out how to harness the Internet, they
had more power to magnify. That's the difference: the distributed were
more nimble and were faster to make use of their new power, while the
institutional were slower but were able to use their power more effectively.
So while the Syrian dissidents used Facebook to organize, the Syrian
government used Facebook to identify dissidents to arrest.
All isn't lost for distributed power, though. For institutional power,
the Internet is a change in degree, but for distributed power, it's a
qualitative one. The Internet gives decentralized groups -- for the
first time -- the ability to coordinate. This can have incredible
ramifications, as we saw in the SOPA/PIPA debate, Gezi, Brazil, and the
rising use of crowdfunding. It can invert power dynamics, even in the
presence of surveillance, censorship, and use control. But aside from
political coordination, the Internet allows for social coordination as
well -- to unite, for example, ethnic diasporas, gender minorities,
sufferers of rare diseases, and people with obscure interests.
This isn't static: Technological advances continue to provide advantage
to the nimble. I discussed this trend in my book "Liars and Outliers."
If you think of security as an arms race between attackers and
defenders, any technological advance gives one side or the other a
temporary advantage. But most of the time, a new technology benefits the
nimble first. They are not hindered by bureaucracy -- and sometimes not
by laws or ethics, either. They can evolve faster.
We saw it with the Internet. As soon as the Internet started being used
for commerce, a new breed of cybercriminal emerged, immediately able to
take advantage of the new technology. It took police a decade to catch
up. And we saw it on social media, as political dissidents made use of
its organizational powers before totalitarian regimes did.
This delay is what I call a "security gap." It's greater when there's
more technology, and in times of rapid technological change. Basically,
if there are more innovations to exploit, there will be more damage
resulting from society's inability to keep up with exploiters of all of
them. And since our world is one in which there's more technology than
ever before, and a faster rate of technological change than ever before,
we should expect to see a greater security gap than ever before. In
other words, there will be an increasing time period during which nimble
distributed powers can make use of new technologies before slow
institutional powers can make better use of those technologies.
This is the battle: quick vs. strong. To return to medieval metaphors,
you can think of a nimble distributed power -- whether marginal,
dissident, or criminal -- as Robin Hood; and ponderous institutional
powers -- both government and corporate -- as the feudal lords.
So who wins? Which type of power dominates in the coming decades?
Right now, it looks like traditional power. Ubiquitous surveillance
means that it's easier for the government to identify dissidents than it
is for the dissidents to remain anonymous. Data monitoring means easier
for the Great Firewall of China to block data than it is for people to
circumvent it. The way we all use the Internet makes it much easier for
the NSA to spy on everyone than it is for anyone to maintain privacy.
And even though it is easy to circumvent digital copy protection, most
users still can't do it.
The problem is that leveraging Internet power requires technical
expertise. Those with sufficient ability will be able to stay ahead of
institutional powers. Whether it's setting up your own e-mail server,
effectively using encryption and anonymity tools, or breaking copy
protection, there will always be technologies that can evade
institutional powers. This is why cybercrime is still pervasive, even as
police savvy increases; why technically capable whistleblowers can do so
much damage; and why organizations like Anonymous are still a viable
social and political force. Assuming technology continues to advance --
and there's no reason to believe it won't -- there will always be a
security gap in which technically advanced Robin Hoods can operate.
Most people, though, are stuck in the middle. These are people who don't
have the technical ability to evade large governments and corporations,
avoid the criminal and hacker groups who prey on us, or join any
resistance or dissident movements. These are the people who accept
default configuration options, arbitrary terms of service, NSA-installed
backdoors, and the occasional complete loss of their data. These are the
people who get increasingly isolated as government and corporate power
align. In the feudal world, these are the hapless peasants. And it's
even worse when the feudal lords -- or any powers -- fight each other.
As anyone watching "Game of Thrones" knows, peasants get trampled when
powers fight: when Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon fight it out in
the market; when the US, EU, China, and Russia fight it out in
geopolitics; or when it's the US vs. "the terrorists" or China vs. its
dissidents.
The abuse will only get worse as technology continues to advance. In the
battle between institutional power and distributed power, more
technology means more damage. We've already seen this: Cybercriminals
can rob more people more quickly than criminals who have to physically
visit everyone they rob. Digital pirates can make more copies of more
things much more quickly than their analog forebears. And we'll see it
in the future: 3D printers mean that the computer restriction debate
will soon involves guns, not movies. Big data will mean that more
companies will be able to identify and track you more easily. It's the
same problem as the "weapons of mass destruction" fear: terroris
-
A bit of background context:
http://law.jrank.org/pages/11407/Writs-Assistance-Case.html
A DUI Checkpoint
http://boingboing.net/2013/11/19/example-of-how-the-police-can.html
-
Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state and godfather of modern totalitarian politics, once explained the totalitarian worldview this way:
"We recognize nothing private."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB30001424052702304791704579216630468814424
The article goes on to discuss China, but is applicable IMO to Obamacare and big government intrusions here as well.
-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
-
I guess it could be either electronic surveillance or possibly simply bribing insiders. Maybe both.
Probably not new. Just more obvious now.
*****Texans Allege ‘Fishy’ Adjustments By The Patriots
WILL GRUBB, Sports Radio 610
December 1, 2013 5:06 PM
Houston (CBS Houston) - The Texans defense struggled against Tom Brady and the Patriots. But then again, who doesn’t?
After the Texans 34-31 loss, defensive end Antonio Smith made it clear he thought Brady had a little extra help in carving up their defense to the tune of 365 passing yards.
“Either teams are spying on us or scouting us,” Smith said.
The nine-year veteran says the Texans added a new defensive wrinkle this week but the Patriots ’miraculously’ knew it was coming.
“It was just miraculous that they changed up some things that they did on offense that keyed on what we put in this week,” Smith said. “There’s no way. We have not did it ever (sic) before and they ain’t never changed it ever before so it was just kind of fishy.”
In 2007 the Patriots were involved in a scandal commonly know as ‘Spy Gate’ where Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 and the team had to forfeit a first-round draft pick for secretly taping coaches and walkthroughs.
“(Brady) knew what we were doing.” linebacker Joe Mays said.
“It is a specific thing that was important to what we were going to do today that they did all year.” Smith added.
The Patriots deciding to spy on a 2-9 team a week after their biggest win of the season seems like a stretch. But if the allegations are proven true, it would certainly be a major scandal for a Patriots team gearing up for a playoff run.
Get in contact with Will Grubb on Twitter – @WillGrubbRadio – or on Facebook – Will Grubb.*****
-
WSJ
Smile, You're on Candid Webcam
A YouTube stunt shows how easy it is to collect personal information from social-media posts.
By L. Gordon Crovitz
Dec. 1, 2013 6:34 p.m. ET
More than one billion people now use social media around the world, but users are still figuring out how much privacy they are willing to trade for being able to share with their friends—and sometimes with strangers.
Comic Jack Vale, who has a channel on YouTube featuring hidden-camera spoofs, recently conducted what he called a "social media experiment prank." He went to a shopping district in Irvine, Calif., and searched social media services to see who was nearby and what he could learn about them.
"I wanted to see how easy it would be to get personal information from complete strangers," he explains in the video's introduction, "and while I'm at it, of course, freak 'em out a little bit. Keep in mind when you watch this video, I got all of this information just by searching their personal social media posts."
He gleaned most of his information from Facebook, FB -0.62% Twitter TWTR -1.03% and the photo-sharing site Instagram, plus geolocation via smartphones. He was able to call out to people on the street by name. He shocked a family by referring to their pet lizard, congratulated passersby on their recent birthdays, and told others of the meals they had just eaten. Among the reactions: "Wow, you're tripping me out right now," "That is really creepy," and "Ew!" One man was unamused: "Thanks for invading our privacy. I'll call the police if you do that again." (Watch the video at http://bit.ly/vale1202.)
Mr. Vale explains in a follow-up video how easy it was to find the personal information. The lesson: "Your information isn't as private as you might think it is to total strangers." The prank video has been viewed more than 2.5 million times.
Debates about privacy tend to be conducted in the abstract by regulators, lobbyists and theorists—not by actual users of social media. The Federal Trade Commission has negotiated 20-year consent decrees that give it broad authority over the privacy policies of companies including Facebook (which now owns Instagram) and Google. GOOG -0.46% But regulators and social-media companies can only guess where users want to set their privacy trade-offs—something the users themselves are still deciding.
The good news is that any need for regulation is falling as people better understand the trade-offs they're making, and as new companies offer greater privacy to those who value it.
A schoolteacher recently wanted to remind her students to be careful what they post online. She posted a photo of herself on Facebook holding a sign that read, "I'm talking to my Fifth Grade students about Internet safety and how quickly a photo can be seen by lots of people. If you are reading this, please click 'Like.' Thanks!" She got more feedback than she expected. People edited her photo to replace her face with those of actors and a smiley face. Others Photoshopped the sign into an Alcatraz prisoner ID and the Declaration of Independence.
Microsoft MSFT +1.09% is trying to use privacy as a way to compete with Google. It recently launched its Scroogled Store online, "dedicated to exposing Google's violations of your privacy." You can order coffee mugs, T-shirts and other gear with slogans making fun of its competitor. Microsoft has argued that Google goes too far by targeting ads based on the content of emails and sharing contact information with others. Among the Microsoft slogans are "Keep calm while we steal your data" and "I'm watching you." Skeptics will point out that Microsoft also uses personal information to deliver ads on Bing and only wishes it had the information Google gets from its Gmail, YouTube and Android.
The truism rings ever more true that if you're not paying for the product, then you are the product being sold. Facebook recently updated its privacy settings to make clear how focused it is on serving its paying customers: advertisers. Its "sponsored stories" program rebroadcasts favorable comments users post about products to their friends. Google recently launched its similar "shared endorsements" program that will place users' names, photos and favorable comments on ads running on any of the two million websites belonging to its ad network. New services such as Snapchat offer "ephemeral" communications, which disappear after the recipient views the video or other message, allowing more-private communications.
Many people regard being "sold" to advertisers as a fair trade for the otherwise free services they get from Facebook and Google. But Mr. Vale's video is a useful reminder of how much privacy they're giving up.
-
Especially the young and dumb.
This is why Sessions is right. Anyone think Exxon was the corporation to fear. What about the internet oligarchs? Who the hell is going to protect us from abuse from them?
The government? Why the government can't even protect their own websites?
Who is going to protect us from the abuse and evil that exists in all humanity?
I hear nothing from our representatives Pubs, Crats, or Partiers. Nothing. As a victim of information technology from organized crime and American Big entertainment business I want answers.
I am still hearing dead Freakin silence. To may ex party Republicans - it ain't just the government we need to fear>
******Op-Ed Columnist
Mommy, the Drone’s Here!
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: December 3, 2013 60 Comments
For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.
. If you aren’t nervous enough reading about 3-D printers spitting out handguns or Google robots with Android phones, imagine the skies thick with crisscrossing tiny drones.
“I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not,” Jeff Bezos told Charlie Rose on “60 Minutes” Sunday, unveiling his octocopter drones.
The Amazon founder is optimistic that the fleet of miniature robot helicopters clutching plastic containers will be ready to follow GPS coordinates within a radius of 10 miles and zip around the country providing half-hour delivery of packages of up to 5 pounds — 86 percent of Amazon’s stock — just as soon as the F.A.A. approves.
“Wow!” Rose said, absorbing the wackiness of it all.
The futuristic Pony Express to deliver pony-print coats and other Amazon goodies will be “fun,” Bezos said, and won’t start until they have “all the systems you need to say, ‘Look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood.’ ”
So if they can’t land on my head, why do they make my head hurt? Maybe because they are redolent of President Obama’s unhealthy attachment to lethal drones, which are killing too many innocents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and our spy agencies’ unhealthy attachment to indiscriminate surveillance.
Or maybe they recall that eerie “Twilight Zone” episode where a Brobdingnagian Agnes Moorehead fends off tiny spaceships with a big wooden stirrer — even though these flying machines would be dropping off the housewares.
Or maybe it’s because after “60 Minutes,” “Homeland” featured a story line about a drone both faulty and morally agnostic. The White House chief of staff, wanting to cover up a bolloxed-up covert operation on the Iraq-Iran border, suggested directing the drone to finish off its own agent, Brody.
“I will not order a strike on our own men,” the acting C.I.A. chief, played by Mandy Patinkin, replied sternly. “Hang it up.”
Or maybe I am leery that Bezos, who is also dabbling in space tourism, was looking for a Cyber Monday p.r. coup by playing to Americans’ ranker instincts, hooking our instant gratification society on ever more instant gratification. Do we really need that argyle sweater plopped in our hands in half an hour as opposed to the next day? What would Pope Francis say?
And won’t all the other alpha moguls want their own drone fleets? Howard Schultz will want to drop your half-caf, bone-dry, ristretto, venti, four-pump, sugar-free, cinnamon dolce, soy, skinny Starbucks latte on the front step at 7 a.m., and Tim Cook will want to deliver the latest Apple toys the soonest, and Disney’s Robert Iger will want his drones gussied up like Mary Poppins.
It will be interesting to watch The Washington Post cover new owner Bezos as he takes on the F.A.A. over drone regulations. The agency is drafting rules to let larger commercial drones and airlines share the sky, with an eye toward issuing licenses in 2015, but a handful of states are passing restrictions of their own.
Lobbying for private unmanned drones, Bezos will be aligned with the Motion Picture Association of America, which is working to get directors the right to use drones for aerial shots.
It’s a business taking flight. Experts say there may be as many as 30,000 unmanned private and government drones flying in this country by 2020, ratcheting drones into a $90 billion industry, generating 100,000 jobs. A degree in drone management can’t be far off.
Politico writes that the logistics of drone delivery will be dizzying: “It’s easy enough to drop a package on someone’s front steps, but what if the person lives in a fifth-floor apartment? Amazon wants to launch the service in large urban areas — could a drone collide with a skyscraper?”
Drones are less restricted abroad. Irish filmmaker Caroline Campbell used one to shoot film of Google and Facebook offices in Dublin, telling Wired, “We feel that it is no more intrusive than something like Google Street View.”
Journalists, police and paparazzi jumped on the drone trend. One photographer dispatched a drone over Tina Turner’s Lake Zurich estate to snap shots of her wedding last summer — before police ordered it grounded.
According to USA Today on Tuesday, all sorts of American businesses are eluding drone restrictions: real estate representatives are getting video of luxury properties; photographers are collecting footage of Hawaiian surfers; Western farmers are monitoring their land; Sonoma vintners are checking on how their grapes are faring. As Rem Rieder wryly noted in that paper, Bezos may eventually let his drones help with home delivery of The Washington Post, “but it’s bad news for kids on bikes.”
Law enforcement agencies are eager to get drones patrolling the beat. And The Wrap reported that in the upcoming Sony remake of “RoboCop,” Samuel L. Jackson’s character, a spokesman for a multinational conglomerate that has to manufacture a special RoboCop with a conscience for America (still traumatized by “The Terminator,” no doubt) scolds Americans for being “robophobic.”
-
http://townhall.com/video/nsa-tracks-cell-phones-around-the-world-n1758053?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm
-
humor
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/12/99693-kimmel-know-crazy-people-wear-tinfoil-hats-think-government-tracking-turns-theyre-right/
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/07/the-fbi-can-secretly-activate-an-individuals-webcam-without-the-indicator-light-turning-on/
-
I have signed this:
http://dickmorris.rallycongress.com/12909/limit-nsa-power/
-
http://truththeory.com/2013/12/10/how-to-see-what-government-agency-is-spying-on-your-phone/
-
CRYPTO-GRAM
December 15, 2013
by Bruce Schneier
BT Security Futurologist
schneier@schneier.com
http://www.schneier.com
A free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on security: computer and otherwise.
For back issues, or to subscribe, visit <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>.
You can read this issue on the web at
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1312.html>. These same essays and news items appear in the "Schneier on Security" blog at <http://www.schneier.com/blog>, along with a lively and intelligent comment section. An RSS feed is available.
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
In this issue:
NSA Spying on Online Gaming Worlds
NSA Tracks People Using Google Cookies
NSA And U.S. Surveillance News
How Antivirus Companies Handle State-Sponsored Malware
Surveillance as a Business Model
News
Evading Airport Security
Schneier News
Crypto-Gram Has Moved
The TQP Patent
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
NSA Spying on Online Gaming Worlds
The NSA is spying on chats in World of Warcraft and other games. There's lots of information -- and a good source document. While it's fun to joke about the NSA and elves and dwarves from World of Warcraft, this kind of surveillance makes perfect sense. If, as Dan Geer has pointed out, your assigned mission is to ensure that something never happens, the only way you can be sure that something never happens is to know
*everything* that does happen. Which puts you in the impossible position of having to eavesdrop on every possible communications channel, including online gaming worlds.
One bit (on page 2) jumped out at me:
The NMDC engaged SNORT, an open source packet-sniffing
software, which runs on all FORNSAT survey packet data, to
filter out WoW packets. GCHQ provided several WoW protocol
parsing scripts to process the traffic and produce Warcraft
metadata from all NMDC FORNSAT survey.
NMDC is the New Mission Development Center, and FORNSAT stands for Foreign Satellite Collection. MHS, which also appears in the source document, stands for -- I think -- Menwith Hill Station, a satellite eavesdropping location in the UK.
Since the Snowden documents first started being released, I have been saying that while the US has a bigger intelligence budget than the rest of the world's countries combined, agencies like the NSA are not made of magic. They're constrained by the laws of mathematics, physics, and economics -- just like everyone else. Here's an example. The NSA is using Snort -- an open source product that anyone can download and use
-- because that's a more cost-effective tool than anything they can develop in-house.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life
or http://tinyurl.com/mwstmmp
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/world/spies-dragnet-reaches-a-playing-field-of-elves-and-trolls.html
or http://tinyurl.com/mee2ubn
http://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games
or http://tinyurl.com/ocosxfd
Source document:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/10/us/politics/games-docs.html or http://tinyurl.com/ke5plvw
Dan Geer's essay:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/dan_geer_explai.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
NSA Tracks People Using Google Cookies
The "Washington Post" has a detailed article on how the NSA uses cookie data to track individuals. The EFF also has a good post on this.
I have been writing and saying that surveillance is the business model of the Internet, and that government surveillance largely piggy backs on corporate capabilities. This is an example of that. The NSA doesn't need the cooperation of any Internet company to use their cookies for surveillance purposes, but they do need their capabilities. And because the Internet is largely unencrypted, they can use those capabilities for their own purposes.
Reforming the NSA is not just about government surveillance. It has to address the public-private surveillance partnership. Even as a group of large Internet companies have come together to demand government surveillance reform, they are ignoring their own surveillance activities. But you can't reform one without the other. The Free Software Foundation has written about this as well.
Little has been written about how QUANTUM interacts with cookie surveillance. QUANTUM is the NSA's program for real-time responses to passive Internet monitoring. It's what allows them to do packet injection attacks. The NSA's Tor Stinks presentation talks about a subprogram called QUANTUMCOOKIE: "forces clients to divulge stored cookies." My guess is that the NSA uses frame injection to surreptitiously force anonymous users to visit common sites like Google and Facebook and reveal their identifying cookies. Combined with the rest of their cookie surveillance activities, this can de-anonymize Tor users if they use Tor from the same browser they use for other Internet activities.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10/nsa-uses-google-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking/
or http://tinyurl.com/l4rxtfk
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/nsa-turns-cookies-and-more-surveillance-beacons
or http://tinyurl.com/l7n4zqh
Me on this issue:
https://www.schneier.com/essay-467.html
http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerability/schneier-make-wide-scale-surveillance-to/240163668
or http://tinyurl.com/ppuek4e
https://www.schneier.com/essay-436.html
Corporations calling for less surveillance:
https://reformgovernmentsurveillance.com/
Free Software Foundation's statement:
https://www.fsf.org/news/reform-corporate-surveillance
QUANTUM:
https://www.schneier.com/essay-455.html
Tor Stinks presentation:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/tor-stinks-nsa-presentation-document
or http://tinyurl.com/qhpauwc
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
NSA and US Surveillance News
Nicholas Weaver has a great essay explaining how the NSA's QUANTUM
packet injection system works, what we know it does, what else it can
possibly do, and how to defend against it. Remember that while QUANTUM
is an NSA program, other countries engage in these sorts of attacks as
well. By securing the Internet against QUANTUM, we protect ourselves
against any government or criminal use of these sorts of techniques.
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/this-is-how-the-internet-backbone-has-been-turned-into-a-weapon/
or http://tinyurl.com/ptbnukq
The US is working to kill United Nations resolutions to limit
international surveillance.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/20/exclusive_inside_americas_plan_to_kill_online_privacy_rights_everywhere
or http://tinyurl.com/l7vn666
This is a long article about the FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit
(DITU), which is basically its own internal NSA.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/21/the_obscure_fbi_team_that_does_the_nsa_dirty_work
or http://tinyurl.com/mozzoyp
There is an enormous amount of information in the article, which exposes
yet another piece of the vast US government surveillance infrastructure.
It's good to read that "at least two" companies are fighting at least
a part of this. Any legislation aimed at restoring security and trust
in US Internet companies needs to address the whole problem, and not
just a piece of it.
As more and more media outlets from all over the world continue to
report on the Snowden documents, it's harder and harder to keep track of
what has been released. The EFF, ACLU, Cryptome, gov1.info, and
Wikipedia are all trying. I don't think any are complete.
https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/nsadocs
https://www.aclu.org/nsa-documents-released-public-june-2013
http://cryptome.org/2013/11/snowden-tally.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure
And this mind map of the NSA leaks is very comprehensive.
http://www.mindmeister.com/326632176/nsa-css
This is also good:
http://www.tedgioia.com/nsa_facts.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
How Antivirus Companies Handle State-Sponsored Malware
Since we learned that the NSA has surreptitiously weakened Internet
security so it could more easily eavesdrop, we've been wondering if it's
done anything to antivirus products. Given that it engages in offensive
cyberattacks -- and launches cyberweapons like Stuxnet and Flame -- it's
reasonable to assume that it's asked antivirus companies to ignore its
malware. (We know that antivirus companies have previously done this
for corporate malware.)
My guess is that the NSA has not done this, nor has any other government
intelligence or law enforcement agency. My reasoning is that antivirus
is a very international industry, and while a government might get its
own companies to play along, it would not be able to influence
international companies. So while the NSA could certainly pressure
McAfee or Symantec -- both Silicon Valley companies -- to ignore NSA
malware, it could not similarly pressure Kaspersky Labs (Russian),
F-Secure (Finnish), or AVAST (Czech). And the governments of Russia,
Finland, and the Czech Republic will have comparable problems.
Even so, I joined a group of security experts to ask antivirus companies
explicitly if they were ignoring malware at the behest of a government.
Understanding that the companies could certainly lie, this is the
response so far: no one has admitted to doing so. But most vendors
haven't replied.
https://www.bof.nl/live/wp-content/uploads/Letter-to-antivirus-companies-.pdf
or http://tinyurl.com/nt5rl4n
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Surveillance as a Business Model
Google recently announced that it would start including individual
users' names and photos in some ads. This means that if you rate some
product positively, your friends may see ads for that product with your
name and photo attached -- without your knowledge or consent. Meanwhile,
Facebook is eliminating a feature that allowed people to retain some
portions of their anonymity on its website.
These changes come on the heels of Google's move to explore replacing
tracking cookies with something that users have even less control over.
Microsoft is doing something similar by developing its own tracking
technology.
More generally, lots of companies are evading the "Do Not Track" rules,
meant to give users a say in whether companies track them. Turns out the
whole "Do Not Track" legislation has been a sham.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that big technology companies are
tracking us on the Internet even more aggressively than before.
If these features don't sound particularly beneficial to you, it's
because you're not the customer of any of these companies. You're the
product, and you're being improved for their actual customers: their
advertisers.
This is nothing new. For years, these sites and others have
systematically improved their "product" by reducing user privacy. This
excellent infographic, for example, illustrates how Facebook has done so
over the years.
The "Do Not Track" law serves as a sterling example of how bad things
are. When it was proposed, it was supposed to give users the right to
demand that Internet companies not track them. Internet companies fought
hard against the law, and when it was passed, they fought to ensure that
it didn't have any benefit to users. Right now, complying is entirely
voluntary, meaning that no Internet company has to follow the law. If a
company does, because it wants the PR benefit of seeming to take user
privacy seriously, it can still track its users.
Really: if you tell a "Do Not Track"-enabled company that you don't want
to be tracked, it will stop showing you personalized ads. But your
activity will be tracked -- and your personal information collected,
sold and used -- just like everyone else's. It's best to think of it as
a "track me in secret" law.
Of course, people don't think of it that way. Most people aren't fully
aware of how much of their data is collected by these sites. And, as the
"Do Not Track" story illustrates, Internet companies are doing their
best to keep it that way.
The result is a world where our most intimate personal details are
collected and stored. I used to say that Google has a more intimate
picture of what I'm thinking of than my wife does. But that's not far
enough: Google has a more intimate picture than I do. The company knows
exactly what I am thinking about, how much I am thinking about it, and
when I stop thinking about it: all from my Google searches. And it
remembers all of that forever.
As the Edward Snowden revelations continue to expose the full extent of
the National Security Agency's eavesdropping on the Internet, it has
become increasingly obvious how much of that has been enabled by the
corporate world's existing eavesdropping on the Internet.
The public/private surveillance partnership is fraying, but it's largely
alive and well. The NSA didn't build its eavesdropping system from
scratch; it got itself a copy of what the corporate world was already
collecting.
There are a lot of reasons why Internet surveillance is so prevalent and
pervasive.
One, users like free things, and don't realize how much value they're
giving away to get it. We know that "free" is a special price that
confuses people's thinking.
Google's 2013 third quarter profits were nearly $3 billion; that profit
is the difference between how much our privacy is worth and the cost of
the services we receive in exchange for it.
Two, Internet companies deliberately make privacy not salient. When you
log onto Facebook, you don't think about how much personal information
you're revealing to the company; you're chatting with your friends. When
you wake up in the morning, you don't think about how you're going to
allow a bunch of companies to track you throughout the day; you just put
your cell phone in your pocket.
And three, the Internet's winner-takes-all market means that
privacy-preserving alternatives have trouble getting off the ground. How
many of you know that there is a Google alternative called DuckDuckGo
that doesn't track you? Or that you can use cut-out sites to anonymize
your Google queries? I have opted out of Facebook, and I know it affects
my social life.
There are two types of changes that need to happen in order to fix this.
First, there's the market change. We need to become actual customers of
these sites so we can use purchasing power to force them to take our
privacy seriously. But that's not enough. Because of the market failures
surrounding privacy, a second change is needed. We need government
regulations that protect our privacy by limiting what these sites can do
with our data.
Surveillance is the business model of the Internet -- Al Gore recently
called it a "stalker economy." All major websites run on advertising,
and the more personal and targeted that advertising is, the more revenue
the site gets for it. As long as we users remain the product, there is
minimal incentive for these companies to provide any real privacy.
This essay previously appeared on CNN.com.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/20/opinion/schneier-stalker-economy/index.html
or http://tinyurl.com/k63ma6h
http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy
http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Papers/zero.pdf
Google's actions:
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-google-ads-user-names-pictures-opt-out-20131011,0,419118.story
or http://tinyurl.com/nxkktsx
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/17/google-cookies-advertising/2823183
or http://tinyurl.com/l555dap
Facebook's actions:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/11/facebook_privacy_deletion/
Microsoft's actions:
http://adage.com/article/digital/microsoft-cookie-replacement-span-desktop-mobile-xbox/244638
or http://tinyurl.com/mcewcdb
Evading "Do Not Track":
http://www.informationweek.com/security/privacy/advertisers-evade-do-not-track-with-supe/240162521
or http://tinyurl.com/l9ge6ke
http://www.zdnet.com/why-do-not-track-is-worse-than-a-miserable-failure-7000004634
or http://tinyurl.com/k6se9rc
Internet tracking by corporations:
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/private-tracking-arms-race
The public/private surveillance partnership:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/the_publicpriva_1.html or
http://tinyurl.com/lr66rkp
Al Gore's remarks:
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Former+vicepresident+Gore+predicts+lawmakers+will+rein/9129866/story.html
or http://tinyurl.com/pt5kmal
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
News
Fokirtor is a Linux Trojan that exfiltrates traffic by inserting it into
SSH connections. It looks very well-designed and -constructed.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/15/stealthy_linux_backdoor/
http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2013-061917-4900-99
or http://tinyurl.com/ljqsxas
http://np.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1qoj11/new_linux_trojan_fokirtor_cunningly_hides/
or http://tinyurl.com/l5lwurs
Tips on how to avoid getting arrested, more psychological than security.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/11/ex-cops-guide-not-getting-arrested/7491/#.UnvMMyUq1dw.email
or http://tinyurl.com/muw7qfw
Rebuttal and discussion:
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2013/11/08/how-to-bend-over-and-please-a-cop/
or http://tinyurl.com/nym77ea
Renesys is reporting that Internet traffic is being manipulatively
rerouted, presumably for eavesdropping purposes. The attacks exploit
flaws in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). The odds that the NSA is
not doing this sort of thing are basically zero, but I'm sure that their
activities are going to be harder to discover.
http://www.renesys.com/2013/11/mitm-internet-hijacking/
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/repeated-attacks-hijack-huge-chunks-of-internet-traffic-researchers-warn/
or http://tinyurl.com/ocktd6s
Safeplug is an easy-to-use Tor appliance. I like that it can also act
as a Tor exit node. I know nothing about this appliance, nor do I
endorse it. In fact, I would like it to be independently audited before
we start trusting it. But it's a fascinating proof-of-concept of
encapsulating security so that normal Internet users can use it.
http://www.pogoplug.com/safeplug
Ralph Langer has written the definitive analysis of Stuxnet. There's a
short, popular version, and long, technical version.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/19/stuxnets_secret_twin_iran_nukes_cyber_attack?page=full
or http://tinyurl.com/pl5jde3
http://www.langner.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/To-kill-a-centrifuge.pdf
or http://tinyurl.com/lcbop7g
Earlier this month, Eugene Kaspersky said that Stuxnet also damaged a
Russian nuclear power station and the International Space Station.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/stuxnet-gone-rogue-hit-russian-nuke-plant-space-station/
or http://tinyurl.com/l27ju9c
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2306181/stuxnet-uk-and-us-nuclear-plants-at-risk-as-malware-spreads-outside-russia
or http://tinyurl.com/p2j4czk
Some apps are being distributed with secret Bitcoin-mining software
embedded in them. Coins found are sent back to the app owners, of
course. And to make it legal, it's part of the end-user license
agreement (EULA). This is a great example of why EULAs are bad. The
stunt that resulted in 7,500 people giving Gamestation.co.uk their
immortal souls a few years ago was funny, but hijacking users' computers
for profit is actually bad.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/12/the_problem_wit_5.html or
http://tinyurl.com/nymttgs
Here's a new biometric I know nothing about: your heartwave.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/03/nymi/
http://bionym.com/resources/NymiWhitePaper.pdf
Telepathwords is a pretty clever research project that tries to evaluate
password strength. It's different from normal strength meters, and I
think better. Password-strength evaluators have generally been pretty
poor, regularly assessing weak passwords as strong (and vice versa). I
like seeing new research in this area.
https://telepathwords.research.microsoft.com/
This is the best explanation of the Bitcoin protocol that I have read.
http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-actually-works/
or http://tinyurl.com/qaan4ml
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Evading Airport Security
The news is reporting about Evan Booth, who builds weaponry out of items
you can buy after airport security. It's clever stuff.
It's not new, though. People have been explaining how to evade airport
security for years.
Back in 2006, I -- and others -- explained how to print your own
boarding pass and evade the photo-ID check, a trick that still seems to
work. In 2008, I demonstrated carrying two large bottles of liquid
through airport security. There's a paper about stabbing people with
stuff you can take through airport security. And there's a German video
of someone building a bomb out of components he snuck through a
full-body scanner. There's lots more if you start poking around the
Internet.
So, what's the moral here? It's not like the terrorists don't know
about these tricks. They're no surprise to the TSA, either. If airport
security is so porous, why aren't there more terrorist attacks? Why
aren't the terrorists using these, and other, techniques to attack
planes every month?
I think the answer is simple: airplane terrorism isn't a big risk. There
are very few actual terrorists, and plots are much more difficult to
execute than the tactics of the attack itself. It's the same reason why
I don't care very much about the various TSA mistakes that are regularly
reported.
Evan Booth:
http://www.terminalcornucopia.com/
http://www.terminalcornucopia.com/#weapons
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/terminal-cornucopia/?viewall=true or
http://tinyurl.com/osblee4
http://www.newstatesman.com/future-proof/2013/11/man-makes-weapons-stuff-you-can-buy-airport
or http://tinyurl.com/l8p5ggp
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3022106/the-tsa-is-no-match-for-this-mad-scientist-and-his-gun-made-with-junk-from-airport-stores
or http://tinyurl.com/pocegl4
http://slashdot.org/story/13/11/16/0228204/object-lessons-evan-booths-post-checkpoint-airport-weapons
or http://tinyurl.com/n5dtxrj
Bypassing the boarding pass check at airport security:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/forge_your_own.html
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/10/hacking_tsa_pre.html
Carrying lots of liquids through airport security:
https://www.schneier.com/news-072.html
Stabbing people after airport security:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/stabbing_people.html
Bringing a bomb through a full-body scanner:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/german_tv_on_th.html
Why terrorism is difficult:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/05/why_arent_there.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Schneier News
I did a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" on 22 November.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1r8ibh/iama_security_technologist_and_author_bruce
or http://tinyurl.com/m8feopo
0-Day Clothing has taken 25 Bruce Schneier Facts and turned them into
T-shirts just in time for Christmas.
http://www.zerodayclothing.com/schneierfacts.php
I have a new book. It's "Carry On: Sound Advice from Schneier on
Security," and it's my second collection of essays. This book covers my
writings from March 2008 to June 2013. (My first collection of essays,
"Schneier on Security," covered my writings from April 2002 to February
2008.) There's nothing in this book that hasn't been published before,
and nothing you can't get free off my website. But if you're looking
for my recent writings in a convenient-to-carry hardcover-book format,
this is the book for you. Unfortunately, the paper book isn't due in
stores -- either online or brick-and-mortar -- until 12/27, which makes
it a pretty lousy Christmas gift, though Amazon and B&N both claim it'll
be in stock there on December 16. And if you don't mind waiting until
after the new year, I will sell you a signed copy of the book.
https://www.schneier.com/book-co.html
I'm speaking at the Real World Cryptography Workshop in New York on
January 15.
http://realworldcrypto.wordpress.com/
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Crypto-Gram Has Moved
The Crypto-Gram mailing list has moved to a new server and new software
(Mailman). Most of you won't notice any difference -- except that this
month's newsletter should get to you much faster than last month's.
However, if you've saved any old subscribe/unsubscribe instructions that
involve sending e-mail or visiting http://listserv.modwest.com, those
will no longer work. If you want to unsubscribe, the easiest thing is
to use the personalized unsubscribe link at the bottom of this e-mail.
And you can always find the current instructions here:
https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-sub.html
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
The TQP Patent
One of the things I do is expert witness work in patent litigations.
Often, it's defending companies against patent trolls. One of the
patents I have worked on for several defendants is owned by a company
called TQP Development. The patent owner claims that it covers SSL and
RC4, which it does not. The patent owner claims that the patent is
novel, which it is not. Despite this, TQP has managed to make $45
million off the patent, almost entirely as a result of private
settlements. One company, Newegg, fought and lost -- although it's
planning to appeal
There is legislation pending in the US to help stop patent trolls. Help
support it.
Patent trolls:
https://www.eff.org/issues/resources-patent-troll-victims
TQP vs Newegg:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/newegg-on-trial-mystery-company-tqp-re-writes-the-history-of-encryption/2/
or http://tinyurl.com/mphuvj4
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/jury-newegg-infringes-spangenberg-patent-must-pay-2-3-million/
or http://tinyurl.com/la9rq4j
Pending US legislation:
https://www.eff.org/cases/six-good-things-about-innovation-act
https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=9416
or http://tinyurl.com/qxygejo
http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/patent/innovation-act-of-2013-latest-effort-to-disarm-patent-trolls
or http://tinyurl.com/kvt8dno
** *** ***** ******* *********** *************
Since 1998, CRYPTO-GRAM has been a free monthly newsletter providing
summaries, analyses, insights, and commentaries on security: computer
and otherwise. You can subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your address on
the Web at <http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>. Back issues are
also available at that URL.
Please feel free to forward CRYPTO-GRAM, in whole or in part, to
colleagues and friends who will find it valuable. Permission is also
granted to reprint CRYPTO-GRAM, as long as it is reprinted in its entirety.
CRYPTO-GRAM is written by Bruce Schneier. Bruce Schneier is an
internationally renowned security technologist, called a "security guru"
by The Economist. He is the author of 12 books -- including "Liars and
Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Survive" -- as well as
hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His influential
newsletter "Crypto-Gram" and his blog "Schneier on Security" are read by
over 250,000 people. He has testified before Congress, is a frequent
guest on television and radio, has served on several government
committees, and is regularly quoted in the press. Schneier is a fellow
at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, a
program fellow at the New America Foundation's Open Technology
Institute, a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an
Advisory Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and
the Security Futurologist for BT -- formerly British Telecom. See
<http://www.schneier.com>.
Crypto-Gram is a personal newsletter. Opinions expressed are not
necessarily those of BT.
Copyright (c) 2013 by Bruce Schneier.
-
Data Mining to Recruit Sick People
Companies Use Information From Data Brokers, Pharmacies, Social Networks
by Joseph Walker
Dec. 16, 2013 6:53 p.m. ET
Some health-care companies are pulling back the curtain on medical privacy without ever accessing personal medical records, by probing readily available information from data brokers, pharmacies and social networks that offer indirect clues to an individual's health.
Companies specializing in patient recruitment for clinical trials use hundreds of data points—from age and race to shopping habits—to identify the sick and target them with telemarketing calls and direct-mail pitches to participate in research.
Blue Chip Marketing Worldwide, a drug-industry contractor, found patients for an obesity drug by targeting people with characteristics suggestive of a sedentary lifestyle, like subscribing to premium cable TV and frequent fast-food dining. Acurian Inc., one of the largest recruitment companies, says innocuous personal details—a preference for jazz, owning a cat or participation in sweepstakes—helped it home in on patients for an arthritis study.
Some health-care companies are pulling back the curtain on medical privacy without ever accessing personal medical records, by probing readily available information from data brokers, pharmacies and social networks. Joseph Walker reports. Photo: Getty Images.
"We are now at a point where, based on your credit-card history, and whether you drive an American automobile and several other lifestyle factors, we can get a very, very close bead on whether or not you have the disease state we're looking at," said Roger Smith, senior vice president of operations at Horsham, Pa.-based Acurian, a unit of Pharmaceutical Product Development LLC.
Targeted advertising has long been used in the retail industry, but its use in health care is raising new concerns. Privacy experts and bioethicists say that as data-mining methods become more sophisticated, it is becoming harder to keep medical conditions private. Targeted consumers have complained to regulators about intrusive tactics and worries that their medical records have been compromised.
Next in Tech: App Helps Patients Track Care
"My private information, especially my medical information, I'm extremely protective of it," says Delbert Kerby, 62 years old, of Rocklin, Calif. The telecommunications consultant says he was surprised when telemarketers called him last year about a study of arthritis. The company didn't leave its name, he says, but he filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about the call. (He has arthritis but has no idea how the company targeted him.)
Federal law bars doctors, insurers and other health-care providers from sharing or selling personally identifiable information in patients' medical records without permission, under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. The law doesn't, however, protect the clues that people leave about their health outside of their medical records—when they make credit-card purchases or search the Internet. Law professor Nicolas P. Terry calls such information "medically inflected data."
"I think patients would be shocked to find out how little privacy protection they have outside of traditional health care," says Mr. Terry, professor and co-director at the Center for Law and Health at Indiana University's law school. He adds, "Big Data essentially can operate in a HIPAA-free zone."
Research firms and patient recruiters, including both Blue Chip and Acurian, say they abide by HIPAA and privacy laws.
Experian EXPN.LN -0.09% PLC, the Dublin, Ireland-based data broker and credit-reporting company, says its marketing-services unit sells data to numerous health-care marketing companies. "However, we do not share any protected health information, and therefore are not providing data that would fall into HIPAA requirements," says Gerry Tschopp, senior vice president for public affairs.
A driver of the trend is the need to speed up recruitment and completion of clinical trials. Drug makers often need thousands of patients for late-stage trials, which can take years to accomplish, lengthening the time it takes to bring a drug to market while the clock is running on the drug's patent exclusivity.
When Orexigen Therapeutics Inc., OREX -2.18% a La Jolla, Calif.-based biotechnology company, needed to enroll 9,000 patients into a study of its diet drug Contrave last year, it turned to Blue Chip. Consultants had said it would take two years to finish enrollment, a timeline that was "not acceptable," says Mark Booth, Orexigen's chief commercial officer.
Blue Chip, of Northbrook, Ill., recruited half of all study patients, helping to complete enrollment in a little over six months, Mr. Booth says. With consumer profiles purchased from data companies like Experian, Blue Chip applied a computer algorithm to flag clues about a person's weight, such as fast-food dining and a history of shopping online for clothes, a trait indicative of obesity because overweight people often can't find plus-sizes in traditional stores or are uncomfortable shopping in public, Blue Chip says.
"The types of magazines you buy, how often you buy running shorts, all of those things tell a story," says Blue Chip Executive Vice President Ken Shore.
Orexigen said last week it had submitted a new drug application for Contrave, and the FDA could make a decision in 2014.
The majority of patients are still recruited through traditional channels such as health-care providers and television ads; newer methods like data mining and social networks account for about 14% of the tactics used by drug makers and their contractors, according to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. Blue Chip, which also uses traditional advertising, says it charges about $2,000 for each patient it enrolls into a study.
Profiling patients based on demographics and purchasing habits, however, can be more effective in finding people who aren't online or haven't recently sought medical treatment, recruitment professionals say.
FTC Commissioner Julie Brill says she is worried that the use of nonprotected consumer data can be used to deny employment or inadvertently reveal illnesses that people want kept secret. "As Big Data algorithms become more accurate and powerful, consumers need to know a lot more about the ways in which their data is used," Ms. Brill says.
Acurian, which has worked with large drug and medical-device companies such as Eli Lilly LLY -0.48% & Co. and Medtronic Inc., MDT +0.02% has been the subject of more than 500 complaints to the FTC over the past two years, alleging violations of telemarketing laws, according to records obtained through a public records request. The FTC hasn't taken any actions against Acurian, said agency spokesman Mitchell Katz. The commission doesn't comment on current investigations as a matter of policy, he said.
Acurian, named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit related to its telemarketing practices, declined to comment on the allegations. In court documents, the company has said that calls related to medical studies aren't advertisements as defined by law.
A Medtronic spokeswoman said the company had hired Acurian for projects like contacting patients from completed studies, but not to identify new study subjects. An Eli Lilly spokeswoman said the company works with Acurian on recruitment campaigns, including through direct mail.
Larna Godsey, of Wichita, Kan., says she received a dozen phone calls about a diabetes drug study over the past year from a company that didn't identify itself. Ms. Godsey, 63, doesn't suffer from the disease, but she has researched it on the Internet and donated to diabetes-related causes. "I don't know if it's just a coincidence or if they're somehow getting my information," says Ms. Godsey, who filed a complaint with the FTC this year.
-
That is why today's meeting of the tech CEOs and Obama strikes me as a joke.
It is like the one of the most corrupt politicians in American history meeting with organized crime figures.
Both guilty of the same think yet pretending they are not linked or two peas of the same pod.
Who is going to protect us from this stuff. BD says not to worry we have regulations.
Are you kidding. No one even enforces the ones we have.
-
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/18/colorado-town-gets-ok-to-hold-drone-hunting-vote-after-legal-fight/
-
second post
http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/17/would-you-believe-zero-terrorist-attacks
-
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/19/data-brokers-sell-rape-victim-names-for-7-9-cents-each-congressional-hearing-reveals/
-
I know that it is a mistake to link to the HuffPo, but I think might interest some of you. It is a talk given in March:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-murrie/what-if-technology-has-killed_b_3679320.html
-
http://leb.fbi.gov/2013/december/legal-digest-searches-incident-to-arrest-in-the-smartphone-age
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7pYHN9iC9I
-
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html
-
second post
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/gadget-border-searches-2/
Does this also apply to the 100 mile border zone?
-
FINRA wants the ability to look at every transaction in your brokerage account.
http://www.finra.org/web/groups/industry/@ip/@reg/@notice/documents/notices/p413652.pdf
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/us/from-petraeus-scandal-an-apostle-for-privacy.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140106
-
http://dickmorris.rallycongress.com/13800/protect-your-privacy-in-your-car/
-
The next step would be tag every person with data collecting devices like biologists tag animals to track their behavior.
Anyone who thinks this kind of power will not be abused is a total nut job. And that includes Peter King who on Geraldo radio this AM was claiming about the NSA.
What did the fool say? These are professionals dedicated to our safety? Can anyone prove one shred of evidence of abuse?
My answer is simply yes - Ed Snowden just did.
How could the rest of us prove anything King? How would anyone even know?
What is he kidding?
King is way off my list. I would rather vote for Hillary. Is this what Republicans have to offer?
-
http://20committee.com/2014/01/20/how-snowden-empowered-russian-intelligence/
-
Damn, both for the father and for the info collected:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/20/mike-seay-officemax-lette_n_4632822.html
From the article:
Mike Seay of Lindenhurst, Ill. received the piece of mail Thursday that listed in the address line below his name: "Daughter Killed in Car Crash."
"Why would they have that type of information? Why would they need that?" Seay told NBC.
-
Hmm, looks like every time I drive my wife to the eye clinic at Johns Hopkins the trip will turn into a Big Brother crapshoot:
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/01/16/driving-through-maryland-how-the-lawful-florida-gun-owner-was-targeted-hint-maryland-coordination-and-analysis-center/
-
Hmm, looks like every time I drive my wife to the eye clinic at Johns Hopkins the trip will turn into a Big Brother crapshoot:
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/01/16/driving-through-maryland-how-the-lawful-florida-gun-owner-was-targeted-hint-maryland-coordination-and-analysis-center/
I'm curious what the PC for the stop would be.
-
I wonder if a MD judge would uphold the search of a vehicle based on an out of state medical marijuana card? What about a possible illegal alien from a state that gives them driver's licenses?
-
If I was in such circumstances, I'd provide the requested documents. If questioned about firearms, I'd state in a polite manner that I would not answer any questions without an attorney present. I would not consent to a search and I would politely ask if I was still being detained.
-
Oh yeah, be sure not a bit of firearm accessory or stray ammo is in your vehicle. It's not like you'll get the professional journalist gun law exemption David Gregory got...
-
Good find BBG!
Good analysis GM.
Defending our Freedom increasingly requires our will and intent.
-
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/how-the-us-almost-killed-the-internet/all/
-
Johns Hopkins is near an ugly part of town. The drive out requires traversing the west side of Baltimore--a place that gives Detroit a run for its money (think The Wire)--and several dozen traffic signals. Without copping to any putative crimes, it annoys the bejesus out of me to have to chose between being able to effectively protect me and mine in ugly neighborhoods and getting my wife the best eye care available.
-
Spy Agencies Scour Mobile Phone Apps for Personal Data, Documents Say
When a smartphone user opens Angry Birds, the popular game application, and starts slinging birds at chortling green pigs, spy agencies have plotted how to lurk in the background to snatch data revealing the player’s location, age, sex and other personal information, according to secret British intelligence documents.
In their globe-spanning surveillance for terrorism suspects and other targets, the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have been trying to exploit a basic byproduct of modern telecommunications: With each new generation of mobile phone technology, ever greater amounts of personal data pour onto networks where spies can pick it up.
According to dozens of previously undisclosed classified documents, among the most valuable of those unintended intelligence tools are so-called leaky apps that spew everything from users’ smartphone identification codes to where they have been that day.
The N.S.A. and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters were working together on how to collect and store data from dozens of smartphone apps by 2007, according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor. Since then, the agencies have traded recipes for grabbing location and planning data when a target uses Google Maps, and for vacuuming up address books, buddy lists, phone logs and the geographic data embedded in photos when someone sends a post to the mobile versions of Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and other services.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/world/spy-agencies-scour-phone-apps-for-personal-data.html?emc=edit_na_20140127
-
http://gizmodo.com/the-fbi-seized-all-of-tormails-data-and-is-using-it-to-1509838202?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
-
http://www.confidesk.com/
-
http://reason.com/blog/2014/02/07/texas-grand-jury-declines-to-indict-pot
-
So says Michael Chertoff:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/06/your-oven-may-be-watching-you-column/5268129/
-
Besides Big Government, the biggest usurper of privacy is Google (or are they now one and the same?).
I carry an Android smartphone (Google operating system). I leave the location feature off, but miss nice features by not being tracked. I use google search and google mail, among other things. It is more than a little creepy. At some point they know everything about you - and they are willing to share!
Interesting article:
Inside DuckDuckGo, Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3026698/inside-duckduckgo-googles-tiniest-fiercest-competitor
DuckDuckGo's Secret Weapon: Hardcore Privacy
When you do a search from DuckDuckGo's website or one of its mobile apps, it doesn't know who you are. There are no user accounts. Your IP address isn't logged by default. The site doesn't use search cookies to keep track of what you do over time or where else you go online. It doesn't save your search history. When you click on a link in DuckDuckGo's results, those websites won't see which search terms you used. Simply put, they're hardcore about privacy
https://duckduckgo.com/
I am going to try this as my default search engine for now and see how it goes. Now Google knows that too.
-
How does Bing rate on the privacy scale?
-
How does Bing rate on the privacy scale?
Don't know. It is a Microsoft product so I would assume lousy. They definitely retain your searches.
Some say better than google:
blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/100004375/is-bing-a-better-bet-than-google-for-privacy-protection/
Google says:
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
I am trying: https://duckduckgo.com/ for searches.
I would be more interested in email featured like gmail, with privacy, without high cost. https://www.reagan.com/ offers something like that, $40/yr. Don't know the quality or features.
-
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/371368/massachusetts-supreme-court-requires-warrant-cellphone-location-data-andrew-c-mccarthy
contrast this:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371201/rand-pauls-frivolous-nsa-lawsuit-andrew-c-mccarthy
-
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20140224-facebookwhatsapp-deal-raises-security-concerns?page=0,0
-
‘The Wild West of Privacy’
FEB. 24, 2014
Joe Nocera
We are fast approaching a privacy crisis in the United States. Google, Facebook and other big Internet companies collect information about us, which they deploy in the service of advertisers. Big data brokers, like Acxiom, have developed sophisticated tools that allow them to know almost as much about us as we know about ourselves; they then sell that data to all kinds of companies that want to learn everything from our habits to our health, from our sexual orientation to our finances. The digital age has made it easy to collect medical data, which is supposed to be protected under federal law. Huge data breaches at big retailers like Target have made it seem unsafe to use credit cards. And I haven’t even mentioned the Edward Snowden revelations about the massive data collection by the National Security Agency.
“The United States,” says Barry Steinhardt, the founder of Friends of Privacy USA, “is basically the Wild West of privacy.”
As The Times noted in an editorial on Monday, it was two years ago that the Obama administration issued a report calling for a consumer privacy bill of rights. Although the report went nowhere, it was full of sound, broad principles: “a sensible framework that would help establish fairness and accountability for the collection and use of personal information,” as a group of privacy advocates put it in a letter they sent to the president on Monday.
The advocates called on President Obama to work with Congress to finally pass privacy legislation. In that spirit, I thought it would be a useful exercise to call some privacy experts and ask them what should be in such a bill. Here’s what they had to say.
REGULATE DATA BROKERS Almost everyone I spoke to saw data brokers as a far bigger threat to privacy than, say, Facebook. These are companies that collect a hundred different data points, both off-line and online, and create scores and profiles that they sell to anyone who wants to buy them. At a minimum, people should know what information of theirs is being compiled. Better yet, people should have a right to control what information of theirs gets sold and what remains private.
OPT-IN INSTEAD OF OPT-OUT The typical terms of agreement that we check when we want to use the services of an Internet company invariably gives the company the right to redeploy our information for their own benefit. Some companies also give consumers the right to opt-out of that information-gathering, but it is usually a process that requires some effort. A far better approach would have customers opting in instead of opting out. This would also likely force companies to explain to their customers why they need the data and what they will use it for, which is another thing that should be included in any privacy bill.
GIVE COMPANIES AN INCENTIVE TO PREVENT DATA BREACHES One reason breaches like the recent Target disaster have taken place is that they bring with them very little consequence. But it would be easy enough to create consequences — a data breach could be treated like an oil spill, with fines attached. The government could also make it easier for people to sue. Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation also says that companies should be doing far more encrypting than they do now. Privacy legislation could give them a push in that direction.
NO MORE SECRETS It’s not just data brokers that need to be more transparent. It is every entity that collects data. People should be able to see the information that is collected on them. For instance, there are companies that compile scores about people — risk scores, or health scores, or fraud scores. Those scores should be known to the people who are being scored because it can affect everything from their ability to get insurance to their chances of landing a job.
(And the latest: How many are aware that our Government wants to hire a company and employees to literally Spy on Children's Cyberspace...)
Just as the government established the www.donotcall.gov website to remove professional disturbers of the peace and corporations from...
This doesn't even touch upon all of the nefarious ways in which information like -cell phone metadata, can be (and is) used.
“You should have the right to know what information is being collected about you, who has access to it, how it is being used, and to limit that use,” says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “And if companies violate those rights, there should be consequences.”
In 1967, Senator William Proxmire, who would later serve as the head of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed through the Truth in Lending Act in the face of fierce opposition from the credit card industry. It was, however, the best thing that ever happened to the industry because it showed consumers, for the first time, that they had some protection from fraud or shady practices.
In some ways, it is the same now with privacy. As much as the companies like Google and Facebook and Acxiom would oppose privacy legislation, they need it — for their sake as well as ours.
Sometimes, government has to save business from itself.
-
"We are fast approaching a privacy crisis in the United States"
This is all that I disagree with. The privacy crises has been occurring for years. Cat is out of the bag. It is too late.
The crises is not in front of us. It is here and now.
-
http://justsecurity.org/2014/02/28/guest-post-optic-nerve-digital-mugbook-questions-raises/
-
http://justsecurity.org/2014/02/28/guest-post-optic-nerve-digital-mugbook-questions-raises/
I doubt the UK has any restrictions on gathering Intel on Americans.
-
http://justsecurity.org/2014/02/28/guest-post-optic-nerve-digital-mugbook-questions-raises/
I doubt the UK has any restrictions on gathering Intel on Americans.
Or subsequently sharing that data with the NSA, who then pretend the act isn't extra-constitutional as the Brits did it, most likely with tools the NSA "shared."
-
Was the FBI correct to ignore the tip from the FSB about the Tsarnev brothers?
-
Umm , , , was that an answer to his question or are you changing the subject?
-
Before we paint with a broad brush, we might want to consider the potential importance of intelligence from foreign entities.
-
Fair enough, but do you see a question presented when the agency in question got the intel with technology from the US that the US is not allowed by our laws to use?
-
Fair enough, but do you see a question presented when the agency in question got the intel with technology from the US that the US is not allowed by our laws to use?
What were they used for? Is your privacy less violated if it's by Canadians or Britt?
-
If our laws prohibit the NSA et al from doing XYZ but the NSA et al can end run it by giving other countries the technology to do XYZ and then give the NSA et al the results, does that make our law a joke?
-
If our laws prohibit the NSA et al from doing XYZ but the NSA et al can end run it by giving other countries the technology to do XYZ and then give the NSA et al the results, does that make our law a joke?
The bigger issue is the backdooring of intel info into criminal investigations and the due process issues that raises and the use of intelligence for partisan polical purposes.
I doubt that the UK's GCHQ or other foreign intel agencies are dependent on our technology.
-
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/obama-cia-senate-intelligence-committee-torture?CMP=twt_fd&CMP=SOCxx2I2
Obama knew CIA secretly monitored intelligence committee, senator claims
White House declines to comment after Mark Udall says agency spied on staffers preparing scathing report into CIA torture after 9/11
Barack Obama. Udall wants the president to help declassify the 6,300-page inquiry by the committee into CIA torture. Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP
Spencer Ackerman in Washington
Wednesday 5 March 2014 12.06 EST
A leading US senator has said that President Obama knew of an “unprecedented action” taken by the CIA against the Senate intelligence committee, which has apparently prompted an inspector general’s inquiry at Langley.
The subtle reference in a Tuesday letter from Senator Mark Udall to Obama, seeking to enlist the president’s help in declassifying a 6,300-page inquiry by the committee into torture carried out by CIA interrogators after 9/11, threatens to plunge the White House into a battle between the agency and its Senate overseers.
McClatchy and the New York Times reported Wednesday that the CIA had secretly monitored computers used by committee staffers preparing the inquiry report, which is said to be scathing not only about the brutality and ineffectiveness of the agency’s interrogation techniques but deception by the CIA to Congress and policymakers about it. The CIA sharply disputes the committee’s findings.
Udall, a Colorado Democrat and one of the CIA’s leading pursuers on the committee, appeared to reference that surreptitious spying on Congress, which Udall said undermined democratic principles.
“As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee in relation to the internal CIA review and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the Committee’s oversight powers and for our democracy,” Udall wrote to Obama on Tuesday.
Independent observers were unaware of a precedent for the CIA spying on the congressional committees established in the 1970s to check abuses by the intelligence agencies.
“In the worst case, it would be a subversion of independent oversight, and a violation of separation of powers,” said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. “It’s potentially very serious.”
The White House declined to comment, but National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said Obama supported making the major findings of the torture report public.
“For some time, the White House has made clear to the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that a summary of the findings and conclusions of the final report should be declassified, with any appropriate redactions necessary to protect national security,” Hayden said.
McClatchy reported that the CIA inspector general has made a criminal referral to the Justice Department, a threshold procedure for opening a criminal investigation.
Neither the CIA nor the Justice Department would comment for this story.
In 2012, the Justice Department closed an inquiry into prosecuting low-level CIA practitioners of torture without bringing any charges. But the prospect of the agency spying on its Senate overseers who prepared their own inquiry potentially places the agency right back into the legal morass it has labored for years to avoid.
In February, the CIA confirmed to the Guardian that it is subject to the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a crime to access government computer networks without authorization. The issue arose after Udall’s partner on the committee, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, asked CIA Director John Brennan at a January hearing, without elaboration, if the statute applied.
Overshadowed by the CIA inspector general’s inquiry is the future of the report itself.
The committee is pushing for a declassification that the Justice Department, in a letter responding to a lawsuit by journalist Jason Leopold, said is a decision that rests with the committee itself.
But the president of the United States possesses wide latitude to order the report released, as the White House says it supports. “The classification system is based on executive order, not on statute, and the president has absolute authority to declassify executive branch records at will,” said Aftergood.
“In this case, he could order declassification of the Senate intelligence committee report today.”
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and ex officio member of the intelligence committee, said the alleged monitoring was potentially “extremely serious.”
“If, as alleged in the media, CIA accessed without permission or authority a computer network dedicated for use by a Senate committee, it would be an extremely serious matter. Such activity, if it occurred as alleged, would impede Congress’ ability to carry out its constitutional oversight responsibilities and could violate federal law,” Levin said in a statement on Wednesday.
-
I agree that this is a bigger issue:
"The bigger issue is the backdooring of intel info into criminal investigations and the due process issues that raises and the use of intelligence for partisan polical purposes."
That said, my previous question remains. It would appear that the NSA has bootstrapped itself into a pretense of having endrun our laws. There is a lawlessness to this this, yes? And is that not the deepest issue of all? An all seeing all knowing state unrestrained by law? Indeed, some of us around here have been arguing that this is exactly why the state should not be all seeing and all knowing.
Your previous post adds power to the point I am making here.
-
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/03/14/what-facebook-founder-did-after-learning-the-govt-was-using-his-site-to-track-people/
-
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-14/google-wants-e-mail-scanning-information-blocked.html
-
Sen. Feinstein’s Awakening
Here again is the problem of surveillance professionals operating within a highly technologized surveillance state: If they can do it they will do it. If they are able to take an action they will sooner or later take it, whether or not it’s a good thing, even whether or not it is legal. Defenders of the surveillance state as it is currently organized and constituted blithely argue that laws, rules, traditions and long-held assumptions will control or put a damper on the actions of those with the power to invade the privacy of groups or individuals. They are very trusting people! But they are wrong. You cannot know human nature (or the nature and imperatives of human organizations) and assume people will refrain from using the power at hand to gain advantage. And so we have to approach surveillance state issues not from a framework of “it’s OK, we can trust our government” but “it’s not going to be OK, government agencies give us new reasons each day to doubt their probity, judgment and determination to adhere to the law.”
Today’s case: Sen. Dianne Feinstein has accused the CIA of compromising and trifling with computers being used by Senate staffers in an investigation of the agency. Here is CIA Director John Brennan’s denial.
What is startling in the story is that it’s not surprising. The CIA is under Senate investigation, in this case regarding its now-defunct secret interrogation and detention program. You can argue whether the investigation is or is not historically justified, politically motivated or operating fully on the up and up. (Unnamed CIA officials had previously told the Washington Post that, in fact, Senate investigators had themselves accessed documents to which they were not entitled.) Feinstein is suggesting the CIA, an executive agency, used its technological capabilities to thwart, confuse or disrupt the legal investigative actions of the legislative branch. If she is correct, that would be a violation of the laws preventing the CIA from conducting domestic surveillance. And of course it would constitute a violation of the separation of powers.
But again, it’s not surprising. If it is true it is very bad, but not a shock. We have been here before, as Ron Fournier notes. But this story will likely make a difference, and wake some people up on the Hill. Dianne Feinstein of California has been a U.S. senator for more than 21 years and has been a vocal defender of the U.S. surveillance apparatus since it came under attack with the emergence of Edward Snowden. She views surveillance from a national-security perspective. As chairman, for five years, of the Senate Intelligence Committee she is more aware than most of the security threats and challenges under which America operates. There is a sense she has viewed the alarms and warnings of antisurveillance forces as the yips and yaps of kids who aren’t aware of the brute realities she hears about in classified briefings. Over the past decades she has been exposed to a large number of intelligence professionals who are first rate, America-loving and full of integrity, and so worthy of reflexive respect. Her loyalty would be earned and understandable.
But now she, or rather her committee’s investigators, have, she believes, been spied upon. Which would focus the mind. She is probably about to come in for a great deal of derision. She should instead be welcomed into the growing group of those concerned about the actions and abilities of the surveillance state. It could not have been easy for her to say what she’s said. She is right to feel and share her intellectual alarm.
-
By
Elizabeth Dwoskin
connect
Updated March 23, 2014 4:36 p.m. ET
These days, it seems privacy is under assault from all sides. Your phone can track your location, your thermostat learns your personal habits, Facebook FB -5.19% knows the most intimate details about your life—and U.S. intelligence agencies are racing to sweep up reams of data.
With every swipe, click and login, people are sharing ever-growing amounts of information about themselves—but now they're getting tired of the consequences. And they're starting to fight back.
More people are turning to a new wave of tools that let them cover their footsteps online or let them know who's watching them.
They're downloading programs that allow them to see how their online activity is being monitored or who can get access to their social-media information. They're turning to browsers and search engines that don't track their queries, and to services that encrypt their messages. Some may soon opt for a new wave of phones that help hide their activity from trackers.
The fears about privacy are widespread. According to the Pew Research Center, half of Americans—up from 33% in 2009—are concerned about the wealth of personal data on the Internet.
But growing numbers of people are also staging everyday rebellions against rampant data mining. According to the same Pew survey, 86% have taken steps to mask their digital footprints.
For instance, ad-blocking tools, which keep ads off your screen and prevent the ad companies from getting data about you, have become the most popular browser extension on the Web: More than a quarter of Americans have downloaded them, according to Forrester Research Inc. FORR -0.79%
Consumers who use privacy tools say they are helping them find a middle ground between too much exposure and disconnecting entirely. Consider how people are using them to keep a tighter rein on social media.
Last year Darren Odden, a 43-year-old software engineer in Santa Cruz, Calif., was shocked to find that pictures of his 16-month-old son were showing up on public Google GOOG -2.79% searches.
Panicked, he considered pulling all his photographs from social-media sites. Then he downloaded AVG PrivacyFix, a free program from the antivirus software company AVG Technologies.
The program's dashboard gives users a snapshot of what information they're actually sharing when they use social networks and services, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Google. It pings users with a small red exclamation point if their privacy settings are weak and sends an alert when a website users have visited in the past 50 days makes relevant changes to its privacy policies.
The reason pictures of his son were leaking into Google queries, Mr. Odden learned on PrivacyFix, was that he had inadvertently made some Facebook settings public.
"Sometimes you want to share pictures of your infant with just your family and a few friends and not with the rest of the world," he says. "It shouldn't be so difficult to do that."
Now that he has control over his data, he says he posts more frequently on social networks. "It empowers me to share more—with the right people," he says. "I know that when I share something with friends or family, I'm not getting uber-personal with a business client."
Other products let people keep track of their personal data in other ways. Privowny, a free privacy toolbar for Firefox and Chrome, can show users which companies have their credit card, phone number and email, and are sharing data about you.
Abine Inc.'s $129 DeleteMe software can remove someone's public profile and contact and personal information from leading sites that gather data about people from around the Web and offer it for a variety of uses, such as background checks.
Another popular way to cover online footprints is to monitor cookies, the tiny files that marketing companies place on sites and browsers to track people's interests and habits. Some of that data gets sent to firms that maintain lists of people who fit marketing characteristics, such as those who are struggling economically or have ailments such as depression or AIDS.
More people are making sure the data doesn't get collected in the first place. According to the Forrester survey, 8% of all Internet users have downloaded programs that monitor and manage cookies.
With this software—such as Evidon's Ghostery and Mozilla's Lightbeam, both free—users generally can see which cookies are on their browser, delete them one by one and block future ones from being placed.
Lydia Snider, a 45-year-old small-business consultant, uses PrivacyFix to see all the cookie trackers that are following her as she surfs the Web. And she sometimes taps into a feature built into Google's Chrome browser: Incognito mode, where all the cookies on sites people visit are deleted so advertisers can't track you. "Whenever I'm searching for anything medical, anything I don't want big data to know about, I now go Incognito," she says.
Searching Securely
The difficulty of searching anonymously makes a lot of people uneasy—especially since the Edward Snowden allegations about the National Security Agency. In response, many are seeking out search tools that don't track their data.
Logan McCamon, a 22-year-old student at Truman State University, in Kirksville, Mo., says he's had a "general unease" about his privacy since the NSA revelations surfaced. Two months ago, he downloaded DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn't collect any information on its users and blocks all ad trackers from the search page.
"I don't know what's being collected, if it's my search history or all my data, or my phone conversations," he says. "Having less data about me out there made me more comfortable."
DuckDuckGo and other Google alternatives have seen traffic soar. Since its founding in 2011, for instance, DuckDuckGo has risen to 4.5 million visits a day. Ixquick, another anonymous search browser, had 2.5 million users a day in the spring of 2013, before the Snowden disclosures. Now it has five million a day.
Many users are also looking to protect their email. Encrypted and so-called ephemeral messaging—texts that disappear seconds after you send them—have become explosively popular among teens, and have long been used by security professionals.
But now people who aren't worried about parents or hackers are seeing value in these apps. WhisperSystems' free encrypted messaging service has had a 3,000% surge in installs since the Snowden revelations, the company says.
Nathan Pham of San Jose, Calif., whose business is to help nonprofits raise money, started using a free encrypted messaging service from Wickr six months ago.
The service scrambles users' communications so their Internet carrier—and the messaging service—can't read them. Mr. Pham uses the service to gossip with his friends and share business ideas with colleagues. "It's not about what you're hiding, but about what you want to share," he says. "I think people are starting to get a grasp on how exposed they are."
Dialing Up Defense
While most of the available privacy technologies are for desktop computers, some new offerings are designed for smartphones, because consumers are spending growing amounts of time on them—and they present such big risks. Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones are beaming people's location to any number of companies that track how they move, while smartphone apps collect reams of personal information.
In recent weeks, a new crop of phones designed to keep user data away from the prying eyes of government and corporations have come on the market. The $189 FreedomPop Privacy phone encrypts a person's text messages and emails, and blocks companies from tracking Web browsing and searches. The Wi-Fi signal is also automatically turned off.
Startup carrier FreedomPop can offer the phone at a cheap price because it uses retrofitted Samsung Galaxy SII devices. While most people are unlikely to switch over to a privacy phone entirely, the company is betting that many people will fork over $189 for a secondary phone that can be used when a person is talking, texting, searching or inputting information that is sensitive.
Another smartphone with similar privacy features, SGP Technologies' Blackphone, sells for $629. (SGP is a joint venture of software firm Silent Circle and device maker Geeksphone.)
But all of these privacy products come with trade-offs. Blocking social-network posts or contact information from showing up on a Google search might protect people's privacy, but it could also mean old friends they'd like to hear from might not be able to track them down either. Deleting cookies means people may miss out on some targeted deals or services from companies that rely on the tracking files. Using secret or encrypted messaging services means people are limiting themselves to conversations with other people who use the same services.
Still, many users say it's worth the effort. Ryan Sheppard, a 22-year-old IT consultant in West Columbia, S.C., who uses an antitracking browser called Aviator, says that sometimes the browser disables his plug-ins, which makes it difficult to load videos.
But he says he's willing to endure the headaches in the name of privacy.
"I know that companies aren't selling my information or my browsing habits," he says. "I have that peace of mind."
Ms. Dwoskin is a staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal in San Francisco. She can be reached at elizabeth.dwoskin@wsj.com.
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/03/24/free-speech-right-to-bear-arms-search-and-seizure-and-due-process-claims-based-on-gun-seizure-can-go-forward/
Free speech, right to bear arms, search and seizure, and due process claims based on gun seizure can go forward
By Eugene Volokh
March 24 at 9:35 pm
So holds Rhein v. Pryor (N.D. Ill. Mar. 20, 2014). At this stage of the proceedings, there has been no factfinding based on the plaintiffs’ allegations, so one cannot assume that the defendants indeed behaved the way the plaintiffs claim. I quote the case only to show what legal theories can be brought if government officials do indeed act in the ways the plaintiffs allege. Here are the factual allegations; note that a FOID card is a Firearm Owners Identification Card that is required under Illinois law to possess guns:
[Plaintiffs allege that, as] of February 3, 2011, Plaintiffs possessed FOID cards, owned firearms, and kept their firearms in their home. At some point before February 3, 2011, David expressed “unpopular political views … about his support of Second Amendment rights” to “a locally elected official.” That official, somebody in that official’s office, or one of the individual defendants falsely construed David’s comments “as evidence that [he] had a mental condition that made him dangerous.” On February 3, 2011, [Illinois State Police] Lieutenant [John] Coffman wrote a letter to David revoking his FOID card under § 8(f) of the Act based on the false and unreasonable assertion that David had a “mental condition” within the meaning of that provision. The letter was mailed on February 4, 2011, and David did not receive it until February 7, 2011.
On February 5, 2011, with Lieutenant Coffman’s approval, Agents Pryor and Summers entered Plaintiffs’ home without a warrant or consent, conducted a search, and seized Plaintiffs’ firearms, which Plaintiffs used for personal protection, hunting, investment, and enjoyment. These actions[, plaintiffs allege,] were taken even though “[t]here was no reasonable basis to conclude David Rhein had a mental condition that presented a clear and present danger to himself or anyone else.” It follows, the amended complaint claims, that the seizure of Plaintiff’s firearms and the revocation of David’s FOID card was “in no way … justified under this statute [§ 8(f)].” Kim’s FOID card was not revoked.
Plaintiffs hired an attorney, and in Summer 2012, as a result of a court order, their firearms were returned to them. Plaintiffs plan to continue engaging in political commentary in support of the Second Amendment, and they fear that their speech will put them at risk of being labeled “mentally unstable and dangerous” and having their firearms seized and FOID cards revoked.
Here’s the court’s analysis:
Plaintiffs allege that Defendants violated their First Amendment rights when they revoked David’s FOID card and seized their firearms because David had “express[ed] unpopular political views, specifically about his support of Second Amendment rights.”
To state a viable First Amendment retaliation claim, a plaintiff must allege that: “(1) he engaged in activity protected by the First Amendment; (2) he suffered a deprivation that would likely deter First Amendment activity in the future; and (3) the First Amendment activity was ‘at least a motivating factor’ in the Defendants’ decision to take the retaliatory action.” The amended complaint plainly alleges all three elements — David’s speech about the Second Amendment was protected by the First Amendment, having his FOID card and firearms taken away could deter him from engaging in that speech, and his FOID card and firearms were taken away because Defendants did not like his speech.
[Plaintiffs] allege that “[t]he actions taken against David Rhein … were done because of his political comments to a locally elected official some time before the illegal search and seizure that concerned David Rhein’s views about Americans’ Second Amendment rights that either the representative, someone in that representative’s office, and/or one of the Defendant Officers somehow construed (falsely) as evidence that David Rhein had a mental condition that made him dangerous”; that David “was unreasonably deemed mentally unfit based on the exercising of his free speech issues regarding the Second Amendment”; and that “[w]hile Coffman alleged in his letter that David Rhein had … a mental condition, this is totally without merit, [and] Coffman had no reasonable basis for making this conclusion.” These allegations are sufficient at this stage of the proceedings to support a claim that Defendants revoked David’s FOID card and took away his firearms in retaliation for his protected speech….
Plaintiffs also allege that the revocation of David’s FOID card and confiscation of their firearms violated the Second Amendment, which provides an individual right to firearms ownership. If David indeed had a mental condition of a nature that posed a clear danger to himself or others, then he likely would have suffered no Second Amendment deprivation. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 626 (observing that “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” and noting that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill”). But Plaintiffs allege that David had no such mental condition and could not reasonably have been thought to have such a condition. Because those allegations are deemed true at the pleading stage, the individual capacity Second Amendment claim survives dismissal….
Plaintiffs allege that their Fourth Amendment rights were violated when “Defendants Pryor and Summers, without a warrant, the Plaintiffs’ valid and voluntary consent, or any other legal justification, entered … and illegally searched the Plaintiffs’ home, and, once inside, … illegally seized the Plaintiffs’ firearms….” The entry and search of a home without consent or a warrant presumptively violates the Fourth Amendment. An exception applies if exigent circumstances are present. Exigent circumstances may be present if there is a “need to protect or preserve life or avoid serious injury.”
Defendants contend that there were exigent circumstances here — namely, the “immediate risk of harm” posed by David’s “mental state that presented a clear and present danger to himself and others” and his possession of firearms. But again, Plaintiffs allege that the supposed concern about David’s mental condition was a ruse and a pretext to take his FOID card and guns in retaliation for his pro-Second Amendment speech. And even putting aside the allegation, taken as true at this stage, that the individual defendants did not subjectively believe that David’s mental condition posed an immediate danger, Defendants must prove that they “had an objectively reasonable belief that exigent circumstances existed at the time of their warrantless entry into [Plaintiffs'] residence.” The amended complaint alleges, plausibly, that any such belief would have been unreasonable, which is sufficient to defeat Defendants’ exigent circumstances argument at the pleading stage….
Plaintiffs allege that the revocation of his FOID card and seizure of his firearms violated his right to due process. Defendants’ brief does not mention the individual capacity due process claim, let alone seek its dismissal….
-
http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/04/16/hippa-federal-health-care-law-allows-law-enforcement-to-view-your-medical-records-without-a-warrant/
-
http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/04/16/hippa-federal-health-care-law-allows-law-enforcement-to-view-your-medical-records-without-a-warrant/
If they can't get the law right, then the discussion on the elements of the law is also suspect. The law in question is HIPAA.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/us/supreme-court-taking-up-police-searches-of-data-troves-known-as-cellphones.html?emc=edit_th_20140428&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
-
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/02/bill-henck-inside-the-irs.php
-
Government could be even more corrupt than private organizations. Nothing in this piece surprises me. I have patients who are Federal employees who have told me stories.
I have witnessed cover-ups first hand at the Copyright Office.
Very few watchdogs exist and from what I see they are up against people who may know more but fear for their jobs and will "sacrifice" or "get involved" to become a whistleblower, massive backscratching among managers, bribery, and agency lawyers who are more concerned about covering up the agencies problems for reputational reasons then rooting out illegal/unethical activity.
-
GM: Please post that in the Corruption thread and the Rule of Law thread as well.
-
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/04/divided_pa_supreme_court_oks_w.html
-
http://www.cnet.com/news/urme-anti-surveillance-mask-lets-you-pass-as-someone-else/?ttag=fbwp
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/urme-surveillance-developing-devices-to-protect-the-public
-
http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/reed-hundt-saving-privacy
"By pooling these data with the communications records it has been collecting since the spread of mobile phone networks two decades ago, the U.S. government has assembled the largest, if least visible, database in the world. It has given a million people security clearances. It has invested billions of dollars in software and hardware to analyze the data. It is constantly launching new code to comb the data for patterns that might reveal who is planning what terrible act against our country’s interests."
-
http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/reed-hundt-saving-privacy
"By pooling these data with the communications records it has been collecting since the spread of mobile phone networks two decades ago, the U.S. government has assembled the largest, if least visible, database in the world. It has given a million people security clearances. It has invested billions of dollars in software and hardware to analyze the data. It is constantly launching new code to comb the data for patterns that might reveal who is planning what terrible act against our country’s interests."
And yet after the Russians gave the FBI the tsarnaev brothers on a platter, lots of Bostonians got fitted for prosthetic limbs.
-
As report on Bret Baier:
Nor apparently are we able to track American citizen jihadis returning from Syria.
-
WASHINGTON — The Right to Be Forgotten.
It sounds like the title of a classic novel about desire and memory, perhaps Marcel Proust’s sequel to “Remembrance of Things Past.”
It is, in fact, based on a French legal phrase, le droit à l’oubli, the “right of oblivion,” which allows criminals who have paid their debt to society to object to the publication of information about their conviction and jail time.
That French concept was the underpinning of the European Court of Justice’s jolting ruling last week that Google and other search engines can be forced to remove search results about ordinary citizens linking to news articles, websites, court records and other documents if the information is deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” — even if it is truthful.
There goes the Internet.
At a time when American society is obsessed with memory and how it slips away, the Europeans are focused on forgetting and how it slips away.
Anyone can get on the Internet. It takes skill and lots of money to get off. The new luxury is privacy.
As James Gleick wrote in “The Information,” “Forgetting used to be a failing, a waste, a sign of senility. Now it takes effort. It may be as important as remembering.”
Still stung by the overreaches of the N.S.A., collaborating with American tech companies, the Europeans are challenging what is far more accepted here: the right of Big Data to have All Data, the right of knowing to trump the right of privacy.
They are implicitly rebuking America, the land of Gatsbyesque reinvention, by defending the right to reinvention.
The suit against Google was brought by Mario Costeja González, a self-proclaimed Google fan and graphologist who is a consultant on nonverbal communication. He resented a Google link to a 1998 Barcelona newspaper article that said the government had forced him to sell a house to settle unpaid debts.
About the Internet, he told The Financial Times, “There is data that is not relevant and that affects your dignity and your private life.”
A New York Times editorial warned that the ruling could lead to a purge that “would leave Europeans less well informed and make it harder for journalists and dissidents to have their voices heard.”
Laura Handman, a First Amendment lawyer and partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, notes that “the right to be forgotten” is an effort to restore the legal concept of “practical obscurity,” which meant, in the old days, people would have to go to a library and look up stories on microfiche to delve into someone’s past.
“There’s no more practical obscurity with search engines,” Handman said. She worries that information from the past that is relevant to the present — be it about criminals, predators, aspiring politicians or even Spanish deadbeats — could be taken down. It could be hard for search engines to make nuanced responses to claims so they might yank chunks of information off, she said, and then, “What gets lost?”
There’s already a measure to help the most innocently reckless, topless, tippling and selfie-obsessed among us. California lawmakers passed a law last year that, in 2015, will give minors the legal right to delete their online indiscretions.
Gleick is dismayed to find himself defending Google. “Forgetting is a skill we have to relearn because it’s a balm, a safety valve, a blessing,” he said. “But lobotomizing the Internet is not the answer.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
Advertisement
“We need to be aware that this kind of perfect, prosthetic memory that the Internet has created for us is a burden as much as it is a useful tool. But that doesn’t mean that people suddenly have the right to burnish their reputations by distorting the record in the infosphere.”
Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
Simon Felz
16 hours ago
Seems simple to me. The right of privacy should trump the right of harmful republication. Any issue, once settled, ceases to be public,...
dave nelson
16 hours ago
Well maybe less rocks to hide under will make people think more about the consequences of their actions AND consequently we might even...
S. Bigalow
16 hours ago
Exactly--"the rich and powerful" control information about themselves. Why should the world have easy access to ours?
See All Comments
Meg Ambrose, an assistant professor at Georgetown University who is writing a book on the subject, praises the European skepticism.
“People are sick of walking on eggshells and censoring themselves,” she said. “They would like a bit of leniency in our personal data and how it’s used.”
Jaron Lanier, the author of “Who Owns the Future?” and a man known as “the father of virtual reality,” vehemently agrees, comparing Gonzáles to “the guy in Tiananmen Square who stood up to a row of tanks.”
He notes that the rich and powerful tech elites — like Google’s Eric Schmidt, who lamented the ruling — seek the ability to control and restrict information about themselves.
He thinks the ruling rebuts Big Data’s “infantile desire for immediate gratification where you get to know everyone else’s secrets even as you seek to keep your own. In order for others to be free, that means you don’t get to stuff your nose into all their orifices all the time. It’s this horrible fusion of nerd supremacy with hyper-libertarianism that has taken over in Silicon Valley.
“We have to give each other some space and trust and room and faith and privacy,” he said. “There should be a right to self-definition, self-invention and how you present yourself.”
Or else we’re digitally doomed to be like Gatsby, “borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
-
The person who sent me the following is not terribly reliable, indeed I haven't even clicked on it yet but perhaps some of the more savvy of us can take a look and comment:
===================================
http://www.nist.gov/nstic/
National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC)
Helping individuals and organizations utilize secure, efficient, easy-to-use and interoperable identity credentials to access online services in a manner that promotes confidence, privacy, choice and innovation.
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/07/technology/internet-giants-erect-barriers-to-spy-agencies.html?emc=edit_th_20140607&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
-
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/warning-san-fran-police-department-monitoring-your-cell-phone-calls/
-
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/nsa-can-spy-on-turned-off-phones-and-use-camera/
-
http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/210518-roberts-court-on-cell-phone-searches-get-a-warrant
-
They use them in N.C. too. http://www.news10.net/story/news/investigations/2014/06/23/is-sacramento-county-sheriff-dept-using-stingray-to-track-collect-data/11296461/
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department may be keeping judges, prosecutors and the public in the dark about the use of a controversial electronic surveillance tool known as the StingRay, according to new information obtained by News10.
Despite evidence showing the sheriff's department is utilizing the device, the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office and Sacramento Superior Court judges said they have no knowledge of StingRays or similar tools being used in Sacramento.
This revelation is concerning to privacy advocates and defense attorneys. They say the intrusive nature of the device, which tracks people in their homes and collects data from third parties, requires a search warrant. The fact that judges and prosecutors haven't heard of this use could indicate that warrants to use a StingRay aren't being obtained.
stingray-1920
StingRay, IMSI catcher(Photo: News10/KXTV)
The district attorney's office said they would expect to see a search warrant for any device capable of real-time location tracking.
"We request a search warrant in all of those cases," Sacramento County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Grippi said. He said while warrants for a wiretap or GPS tracking devices are fairly common, he has never seen a Stingray warrant.
The sheriff's department won't acknowledge they own the surveillance tool or talk about how it works. They also won't discuss who is targeted with it or what oversight mechanisms are in place to govern its use.
A News10 investigation in March showed the spying device is being used by at least nine local law enforcement agencies in California, from San Diego to Sacramento.
A StingRay is a brand of IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) catcher, a device that mimics a cell tower and attracts all wireless phone signals within a certain radius into connecting with it. Authorities can use it to track the location of phones in real time, as well as the unique ID and phone numbers of all connected phones and the numbers dialed by a connected phone. That includes the phone numbers of outgoing calls and text messages.
StingRays also can be configured to capture the content of calls and texts connected to the device, although Harris Corporation, the maker of Stingray and similar products, said devices used by law enforcement don't have that capability.
Linda Lye, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, spent several years battling federal and local authorities for StingRay records. Lye reviewed documents and other evidence obtained by News10 and believes the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department is almost certainly using a StingRay, and likely with little to no oversight.
"There's no California law governing how StingRays are to be used," Lye said. "It means law enforcement is using them under rules that they have unilaterally written."
Over the past six months the sheriff's department has denied multiple requests from News10 to discuss the technology. News10 submitted a records request to the sheriff's department in October 2013 asking for contracts, agreements, invoices, purchase orders or maintenance contracts signed with Harris Corporation.
The sheriff's department responded by providing a purchase order for a "High Powered Filtered 25W PA Kit (CONUS)" costing $11,500, but said they had no other responsive records or documentation specifically related to a StingRay device.
Procurement documents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement describe the "High Powered Filtered 25W PA Kit (CONUS)" as a signal amplifier for a StingRay device.
In early February, News10 obtained StingRay records from the San Jose Police Department. San Jose was interested in purchasing a StingRay from the Harris Corporation and discussed the device with other law enforcement agencies already using it - including the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department.
"The Harris Corporation is a government contractor and the sole supplier of this technology and type of product line," stated a San Jose Police Department grant application requesting Department of Homeland Security funds to purchase a StingRay. "The Harris Corporation is bound by Title 18 USC 2512 and is protected under non-disclosure agreement and federal law. Research of the product consisted of testing by San Jose Police and technology and equipment feedback from the U.S. Marshals Service, [Redacted], the Oakland Police Department, the Sacramento Sheriff's Department, the San Diego Sheriff's Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department."
"While I am not familiar with what San Jose has said, my understanding is that the acquisition or use of this technology comes with a strict non-disclosure requirement," Sacramento County Undersheriff James Lewis said in a written statement. "Therefore, it would be inappropriate for us to comment about any agency that may be using the technology."
Privacy advocates such as the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation argue that a non-disclosure agreement between the sheriff's department and a private corporation is not a valid reason to withhold public records.
"Government agencies cannot enter into private contracts in order to evade their statutory obligations," Lye said.
The sheriff's department later refused to release additional records requested by News10, citing several federal regulations, including the Freedom of Information Act, the Homeland Security Act, International Traffic in Arms Regulations and the Arms Export Control Act.
Lye reviewed the department's justification to withhold public records and said she believes their justification is invalid. The arms trafficking exemptions, she said, don't apply to StingRays.
"In order to be protected under that, there would have to have been a determination that they're on the U.S. munitions list, and they're not," Lye said.
-
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/googles-satellites-could-soon-see-your-face-from-space
-
:-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2725893/Are-apps-secretly-listening-calls-Security-experts-discover-gyroscopes-identify-voices-VIBRATIONS.html
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjRzOXgweVU
-
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/los-angeles-collects-information-on-citizens-via-traffic-cameras-3000000-a-week/
-
I know someone who is being surveillance by organized crime. At least one local cop is part of the equation. Nice to know they have broad power to surveillance.
I am very glad apple and hopefully the rest of the "masters of the universe" are/will come out with devices to keep government officals out.
Everything is not always in the name of terrorism.
Problem who is watching the "master's of the universe" including Apple. (using Sen Session's name).
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/27/technology/iphone-locks-out-the-nsa-signaling-a-post-snowden-era-.html?emc=edit_th_20140927&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/27/technology/iphone-locks-out-the-nsa-signaling-a-post-snowden-era-.html?emc=edit_th_20140927&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
Don't believe the hype.
-
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-to-defend-your-privacy-online/
-
http://lasvegassun.com/youre-being-watched/
-
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/breaking-congress-secretly-okd-nsa-spying-domestic-criminal-cases-focused-torture/
-
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141214/06590429436/verizon-offers-encrypted-calling-with-nsa-backdoor-no-additional-charge.shtml
-
Ain't that cute , , , :x
-
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/12/the-webcam-hacking-epidemic/383998/?single_page=true
-
:cry: :x
-
HAYMARKET, Va. — FOUR years ago, the Federal Trade Commission announced, with fanfare, a plan to let American consumers decide whether to let companies track their online browsing and buying habits. The plan would let users opt out of the collection of data about their habits through a setting in their web browsers, without having to decide on a site-by-site basis.
The idea, known as “Do Not Track,” and modeled on the popular “Do Not Call” rule that protects consumers from unwanted telemarketing calls, is simple. But the details are anything but.
Although many digital advertising companies agreed to the idea in principle, the debate over the definition, scope and application of “Do Not Track” has been raging for several years.
Now, finally, an industry working group is expected to propose detailed rules governing how the privacy switch should work. The group includes experts but is dominated by Internet giants like Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google and Yahoo. It is poised to recommend a carve-out that would effectively free them from honoring “Do Not Track” requests.
If regulators go along, the rules would allow the largest Internet giants to continue scooping up data about users on their own sites and on other sites that include their plug-ins, such as Facebook’s “Like” button or an embedded YouTube video. This giant loophole would make “Do Not Track” meaningless.
How did we get into this mess?
For starters, the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t seem to fully understand the nature of the Internet.
Online companies typically make money by utilizing data gleaned from their users to sell targeted ads. If the flow of user data slows down, so does the money. A study commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau with researchers from Harvard Business School underscores the point: at least half of the Internet’s economic value is based on the collection of individual user data, and nearly all commercial content on the Internet relies on advertising to some extent. Digital advertising grew to a $42.8 billion business last year, a sum that already exceeds spending on broadcast television advertising.
Essentially, the collection of user data makes possible the free access to maps, email, games, music, social networks and other services.
Digital privacy advocates, understandably, view the online ecosystem differently. They are alarmed by the growth of the surveillance economy, in which companies compile and store information about what a user reads, looks for, clicks on or buys. In this world, disclosure is fairly meaningless, because almost no one reads the terms of service that define the relationship between the customer and the company.
The regulatory process is the wrong way to address this fundamental tension. If the government wants to shift the Internet economy away from a “barter” system (exchanging personal data for free services) toward a subscription-based system, Congress should take charge.
Even worse, the Federal Trade Commission has abandoned responsibility, all but throwing up its hands. Instead of leading the effort to write good rules, based on the broadest public participation, the commission has basically surrendered control of the process to the industry panel, the “tracking protection working group” of the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
The outcome could be worse than doing nothing at all.
Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
John
11 hours ago
Something needs to be done. How is it possible that if I want to use any little insignificant app on my phone, I have to let them have...
Mick
11 hours ago
Those who believe "...the regulatory process is the wrong way to address this..." sure are well represented in the NYT. And look where it's...
Robin Muench
11 hours ago
There are more than enough software fixes out there to deter nearly all tracking. For a start, use Firefox as a browser, then add in Adblock...
See All Comments
The industry recommendation is expected to distinguish between companies that have a “first party” relationship with users — consumer-facing Internet content providers and Internet service providers — and “third party” companies, which include most small advertising-technology companies.
First-party relationships would be created if the user “intends to interact” with the web company (or a service provider acting on behalf of that company). For example, logging into Facebook would count as a “user action” that would allow Facebook to track your activity “across multiple distinct contexts,” including other websites.
In contrast, companies with third-party relationships would have far more limited tracking abilities. For example, if a user visits a site that integrates an advertisement with content from other sources, the ad server would not be able to place a tracking “cookie” for marketing purposes on your device without your consent.
This dubious distinction would harm competition in the online ad market by turning “Do Not Track” into “Do Not Track for small ad companies only.” Google, Facebook and other large companies that operate both first- and third-party businesses would be able to use data they gather through their first-party relationships to compete in the third-party ad market. Smaller ad tech companies would be at a severe competitive disadvantage and could even be driven out of the market.
The Federal Trade Commission shouldn’t help pick winners and losers through a murky process that has devolved into an effort to protect the positions of Internet giants. It should stay focused on policing the behavior of companies that short-shrift consumers or restrict competition. If the industry group recommends a lopsided version of “Do Not Track,” as expected, the commission should not go along with it. The correct balance between privacy and competition is a decision better left to Congress than to a feckless regulator.
-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2889860/Hackers-steal-fingerprint-PHOTO-Copycat-print-used-criminals-fool-security-systems.html
-
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/12/this-usb-wall-charger-secretly-logs-keystrokes-from-microsoft-wireless-keyboards-nearby/
-
If I hear one more person tell me organized crime is defunct......
Just because we don't don't see them using Tommy guns ala Valentine's Day doesn't mean white collar organized crime is not rampant it is.
Because most people can't see it they don't understand, believe, or think it effects them.
They're wrong.
What is law enforcement doing about it? Thanks to our feckless politicians as far as I can tell, very little.
One even has to ask how much our politicians or those who support them are directly involved.
It isn't just illegals they are not doing nothing about.
-
Generally, there must be a complaintant for law enforcement to open an investigation. Illegal surveillance is by it's nature, very difficult to detect.
-
Well! This is profoundly disconcerting!!!
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/19/police-radar-see-through-walls/22007615/
:x :x :x
-
Well! This is profoundly disconcerting!!!
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/19/police-radar-see-through-walls/22007615/
:x :x :x
Why?
-
C'mon GM, you're not only a very bright guy, you are also very well versed in the issues appearing here.
-
It's one thing if officers were driving down the street with virtual X-ray glasses looking through every house they drive by, another if a specific house where a fugitive with a valid arrest warrant is believed to be hiding, or a hostage rescue scenario.
A reasonable expectation of privacy differs in each case.
-
I didn't get that the use of these was limited to serving warrants GM. Indeed, the courts here seem more than a little surprised that the technology exists.
-
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/08/telescreen/
-
http://www.wsj.com/articles/sleuthing-search-engine-even-better-than-google-1423703464?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories
n the run-up to Super Bowl XLIX, a team of social workers in Glendale, Ariz. spent two weeks combing through local classified ads sites. They were looking for listings posted by sex traffickers.
Criminal networks that exploit women often advertise on local sites around events that draw large numbers of transient visitors. “It’s like a flood,” said Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, who headed the Glendale effort.
Dr. Roe-Sepowitz is director of the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research at Arizona State University. She has worked for five years with authorities in Houston, Las Vegas and Phoenix to find and hunt down traffickers.
In the past, she painstakingly copied and pasted suspicious URLs into a document and looked for patterns that suggested a trafficking ring. This year, she analyzed criminal networks using visual displays from a powerful data-mining tool, one whose capabilities hint at the future of investigations into online criminal networks.
The program, a tool called Memex developed by the U.S. military’s research and development arm, is a search engine on steroids. Rather than endless pages of Web links, it returns sophisticated infographics that represent the relationships between Web pages, including many that a Google search would miss.
Advertisement
For instance, searching the name and phone number that appear in a suspicious ad would result in a diagram that showed separate constellations of dots, representing links to ads that contain the name, the phone number, or both. Such results could suggest a ring in which the same phone number was associated with different women. Clicking on a dot can reveal the physical location of the device that posted the ad and the time it was posted. Another click, and it shows a map of the locations from which the ads were posted. Capabilities like this make it possible to identify criminal networks and understand their operations in powerful new ways.
Unlike a Google search, Memex can search not only for text but also for images and latitude/longitude coordinates encoded in photos. It can decipher numbers that are part of an image, including handwritten numbers in a photo, a technique traffickers often use to mask their contact information. It also recognizes photo backgrounds independently of their subjects, so it can identify pictures of different women that share the same backdrop, such as a hotel room—a telltale sign of sex trafficking, experts say.
Also unlike Google, it can look into, and spot relationships among, not only run-of-the-mill Web pages but online databases such as those offered by government agencies and within online forums (the so-called deep Web) and networks like Tor, whose server addresses are obscured (the so-called dark Web).
Since its release a year ago, Memex has had notable successes in sex-trafficking investigations. New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance said Memex has generated leads in 20 investigations and has been used in eight trials prosecuted by the county’s sex-trafficking division. In a case last June, Mr. Vance said, Memex’s ability to search the posting times of ads that had been taken down helped in a case that resulted in the sentencing of a trafficker to 50 years to life in prison.
The creator of Memex is Christopher White, a Harvard-trained electrical engineer who runs big-data projects for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa. The Defense Department’s center of forward-looking research and development, Darpa put between $10 million and $20 million into building Memex. (The precise amount isn’t disclosed.) Although the tool can be used in any Web-based investigation, Dr. White started with the sex trade because the Defense Department believed its proceeds finance other illegal activities.
Memex is part of a wave of software tools that visualize and organize the rising tide of online information. Unlike many other tools, though, it is free of charge for those who want to download, distribute and modify. Dr. White said he wanted Memex to be free “because taxpayers are paying for it.” Federal agencies have more money to spend, but local law-enforcement agencies often can’t afford the most sophisticated tools, even as more criminal activity moves online.
ENLARGE
Among tools used by law-enforcement agencies, Memex would compete with software from Giant Oak, Decision Lens and Centrifuge Systems. The leader in the field is Palantir Technologies, whose software costs $10 million to $100 million per installation and draws from the user’s proprietary databases rather than from the Web. Palantir didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Advertisements posted by sex traffickers amount to between $90,000 and $500,000 daily in total revenue to a variety of outlets, according to Darpa.
Memex and similar tools raise serious questions about privacy. Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., said, that when law-enforcement authorities start using powerful data-mining software, “the question that moves in the background is how much of this is actually lawful.” Data-visualization tools like Memex enable enforcers to combine vast amounts of public and private information, but the implications haven’t been fully examined, he said.
Dr. White said he drew a “bright line” around online privacy, designing Memex to index only publicly available information. In anonymous networks like Tor, which hosts many sex ads, Memex finds only the public pages. But since the tool isn't technically controlled by Darpa, independent developers could add capabilities that would make it more invasive, he acknowledged.
Another big question is whether sex traffickers and other malefactors will thwart Memex by changing their tactics. For example, they might blur out photo backgrounds if they knew law enforcement officials were searching for them. For this reason, law-enforcement users will withhold some of the proprietary data they developed while using Memex. “We want it to be free,” said Dr. White. “But there’s always this tension between knowing what people are doing…and alerting them to that fact so they change their behavior.”
Dr. White is starting to test other uses for Memex with law enforcement and government partners, he said, including recognizing connections between shell companies, following the chains of recruitment for foreign fighters drawn to the terrorist group ISIS, mapping the spread of epidemics, and following ads for labor and goods to understand supply chains involved in money laundering.
Write to Elizabeth Dwoskin at elizabeth.dwoskin@wsj.com
-
http://www.thecourt.ca/2014/12/31/r-v-fearon-cell-phones-privacy-and-the-supreme-court-in-the-digital-age/
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbyuuOl5Y4s
-
SAN FRANCISCO — TODAY, we’re filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency to protect the rights of the 500 million people who use Wikipedia every month. We’re doing so because a fundamental pillar of democracy is at stake: the free exchange of knowledge and ideas.
Our lawsuit says that the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance of Internet traffic on American soil — often called “upstream” surveillance — violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects the right to privacy, as well as the First Amendment, which protects the freedoms of expression and association. We also argue that this agency activity exceeds the authority granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Congress amended in 2008.
Most people search and read Wikipedia anonymously, since you don’t need an account to view its tens of millions of articles in hundreds of languages. Every month, at least 75,000 volunteers in the United States and around the world contribute their time and passion to writing those articles and keeping the site going — and growing.
On our servers, run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, those volunteers discuss their work on everything from Tiananmen Square to gay rights in Uganda. Many of them prefer to work anonymously, especially those who work on controversial issues or who live in countries with repressive governments.
These volunteers should be able to do their work without having to worry that the United States government is monitoring what they read and write. Unfortunately, their anonymity is far from certain because, using upstream surveillance, the N.S.A. intercepts and searches virtually all of the international text-based traffic that flows across the Internet “backbone” inside the United States. This is the network of fiber-optic cables and junctions that connect Wikipedia with its global community of readers and editors.
As a result, whenever someone overseas views or edits a Wikipedia page, it’s likely that the N.S.A. is tracking that activity — including the content of what was read or typed, as well as other information that can be linked to the person’s physical location and possible identity. These activities are sensitive and private: They can reveal everything from a person’s political and religious beliefs to sexual orientation and medical conditions.
The notion that the N.S.A. is monitoring Wikipedia’s users is not, unfortunately, a stretch of the imagination. One of the documents revealed by the whistle-blower Edward J. Snowden specifically identified Wikipedia as a target for surveillance, alongside several other major websites like CNN.com, Gmail and Facebook. The leaked slide from a classified PowerPoint presentation declared that monitoring these sites could allow N.S.A. analysts to learn “nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet.”
The harm to Wikimedia and the hundreds of millions of people who visit our websites is clear: Pervasive surveillance has a chilling effect. It stifles freedom of expression and the free exchange of knowledge that Wikimedia was designed to enable.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
During the 2011 Arab uprisings, Wikipedia users collaborated to create articles that helped educate the world about what was happening. Continuing cooperation between American and Egyptian intelligence services is well established; the director of Egypt’s main spy agency under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi boasted in 2013 that he was “in constant contact” with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Continue reading the main story
Recent Comments
Stan Chaz
12 minutes ago
Whoever taught President Obama constitutional lawshould be fired, ....if they're still around.At the very least they should hang their heads...
Lady Liberty
14 minutes ago
Politics and science is never a good mix.Before we know it we the people are corralled beyond an imaginary boundary so freedom can't escape.
Stu
14 minutes ago
There is no question that the NSA and the system that spawns it has no respect for anything other than their own goals. A lawsuit--which...
See All Comments
Write a comment
So imagine, now, a Wikipedia user in Egypt who wants to edit a page about government opposition or discuss it with fellow editors. If that user knows the N.S.A. is routinely combing through her contributions to Wikipedia, and possibly sharing information with her government, she will surely be less likely to add her knowledge or have that conversation, for fear of reprisal.
And then imagine this decision playing out in the minds of thousands of would-be contributors in other countries. That represents a loss for everyone who uses Wikipedia and the Internet — not just fellow editors, but hundreds of millions of readers in the United States and around the world.
In the lawsuit we’re filing with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, we’re joining as a fellow plaintiff a broad coalition of human rights, civil society, legal, media and information organizations. Their work, like ours, requires them to engage in sensitive Internet communications with people outside the United States.
That is why we’re asking the court to order an end to the N.S.A.’s dragnet surveillance of Internet traffic.
Privacy is an essential right. It makes freedom of expression possible, and sustains freedom of inquiry and association. It empowers us to read, write and communicate in confidence, without fear of persecution. Knowledge flourishes where privacy is protected.
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation, of which Lila Tretikov is the executive director.
-
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/supreme-court-if-youre-being-gps-tracked-youre-being-searched/389114/?single_page=true
-
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/supreme-court-if-youre-being-gps-tracked-youre-being-searched/389114/?single_page=true
If you are being surveiled by officers in plain clothes, is that a search?
-
A fair and logical question.
I would answer that there is an inherent limit on the police power that comes from manpower limitations, whereas with this new technology, and others coming down the pike, that a dramatic shift in the balance between citizens and the police occurs-- and an Orwellian state begins to coalesce.
-
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/police-drug-sniffing-dog-violates-your-rights/?fb_action_ids=10205182973906620&fb_action_types=og.shares
-
A fair and logical question.
I would answer that there is an inherent limit on the police power that comes from manpower limitations, whereas with this new technology, and others coming down the pike, that a dramatic shift in the balance between citizens and the police occurs-- and an Orwellian state begins to coalesce.
If an officer is operating a drone following you in a public place, is that a search?
-
Interesting question. First impression is that it does meet my objection. My first response is that there should be some sort of probable cause basis.
-
Interesting question. First impression is that it does meet my objection. My first response is that there should be some sort of probable cause basis.
You need probable cause to surveil a suspect? Why not raise the standard to beyond a reasonable doubt?
-
Federal law-enforcement and phone-company officials also have expressed concerns that some local police authorities were abusing a legal shortcut by submitting an inordinate number of requests for cellphone information, according to people familiar with the matter. A Baltimore police official, for example, told a local judge overseeing a murder case last month the department had used the devices at least 4,300 times dating to 2007. The judge ruled the use of the device in that case was permissible.
One of the most effective ways to find a suspect using the technology is to get the last known location of the suspect’s phone—which can be provided by a phone company. Some companies can “ping” a phone in real time to determine its general whereabouts while others can tell investigators where it made its last call or text.
The Journal last year detailed how the U.S. Marshals Service flies planes equipped with the devices from airports around five major U.S. cities, scanning tens of thousands of phones at a time in densely populated areas as it hunts for fugitives. The Justice Department also uses them outside U.S. soil, and a Marshals employee was shot last July in a secret operation with such a device in Mexico, leading some law-enforcement officials to question how Justice Department managers decide to deploy them.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has demanded more details from the Justice Department about their use in response to the articles.
“We know it’s got to come out,” one law-enforcement official said. “At some point, it becomes more harmful to try to keep it secret than to acknowledge it. We just want to acknowledge it carefully and slowly, so we don’t lose what is a very effective tool.”
Officials said they don’t want to reveal so much that it gives criminals clues about how to defeat the devices. Law-enforcement officials also don’t want to reveal information that would give new ammunition to defense lawyers in prosecutions where warrants weren’t used, according to officials involved in the discussions.
And one federal agency, the U.S. Marshals, are fugitive-hunters who rarely testify in court, so they are likely to reveal much less about how they use the technology than their counterparts at the FBI and DEA, these people said.
Law-enforcement officials say they aren’t interested in gathering large amounts of information with the devices and say their purpose is typically finding a single suspect in a sea of floating digital data. Privacy advocates say the methods amount to a digital dragnet—a silent ID check of untold numbers of innocent people who aren’t suspected of anything, or even aware their phones are being checked. The machines can also interrupt service on cellphones being scanned.
The effectiveness of the technology in finding suspects is prompting some local law enforcement to use it frequently.
ENLARGE
About a year ago, Baltimore police officials began deluging some phone companies with requests for customer cellphone information, claiming it couldn’t wait for a judge’s order, according to people familiar with the matter. Normally, police need a court order to get that kind of information about a phone customer. But there is an exception for emergency requests. Phone companies’ rules vary, but they generally allow emergency requests to be fulfilled in missing-persons cases or when there is a risk of death or serious injury. Typically, the phone company employee doesn’t ask questions to verify the nature of the emergency.
Local police departments must sign a nondisclosure agreement with the FBI before getting access to the technology—agreeing not to reveal details of how the technology works and to seek guidance from the FBI if questioned in court or elsewhere. As part of that agreement, police agencies acknowledge they may have to drop charges against suspects if prosecuting a suspect risks revealing information about the machines.
In contrast, the FBI doesn’t require or provide legal standards to police on best practices for how to use the devices, according to people familiar with the issue. Officials say that if a police department asks for advice on how they use the devices, the FBI will provide it.
People familiar with the Baltimore matter said police there have scaled back their emergency requests.
But some phone company officials remain concerned the emergency request function is prone to abuse, according to people familiar with the issue. A spokesman for the police department didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest cellphone provider, saw an 8% increase in emergency requests by law enforcement nationwide from the first half to the second half of 2014, according to company data.
The overall number of law-enforcement requests fell by 7% from the first half, according to Verizon. AT&T Inc. data showed a 4% increase in emergency law-enforcement requests along with an increase in nonemergency requests. Emergency requests encompass a range of issues, including trying to track information from dropped 911 calls.
In a federal court filing last year in Atlanta, AT&T broadly discussed the increasing demands that law enforcement is putting on phone companies.
“AT&T receives and responds to an enormous volume of official demands to provide information to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in the United States,” lawyers for the company wrote in the filing.
The company has more than 100 full-time employees staffed to meet the volume of requests from law enforcement and civil lawsuits.
Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com
Popular on WSJ
-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/05/09/the-revolution-will-be-digitized/
-
http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-behind-mysterious-surveillance-aircraft-over-us-cities-070836765--politics.html#
-
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/supreme-court-rules-cops-warrant-search-home/
-
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/supreme-court-rules-cops-warrant-search-home/
What a insightful and balanced examination of the subject!
-
Understood, but it was the only one on the decision I found.
-
http://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/2014/04/03/supreme-court-decision-in-fernandez-v-california-supports-leos/
-
GM:
That was a superior discussion of the case.
-
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/a-devastating-leak-for-edward-snowdens-critics/373991/
-
http://pursuitmag.com/is-big-brother-google-spying-on-you/
Yes. Next question?
-
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/07/29/tape-your-webcam-horrifying-malware-broadcasts-you-to-the-world
Vermin.
-
And these are the same fools protecting protecting all the other information they gather about Americans, et al.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/world/asia/us-decides-to-retaliate-against-chinas-hacking.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
-
https://bgr.com/2015/07/31/windows-10-upgrade-spying-how-to-opt-out/
-
Moved to Intel Matters thread
-
http://www.komando.com/cool-sites/321368/turn-off-google-listening-to-everything-you-say/all
Google's actual slogan: Be evil.
-
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/if-youre-not-paranoid-youre-crazy/407833/
-
http://www.komando.com/happening-now/331211/a-picture-of-you-from-facebook-could-be-a-part-of-this-facial-recognition-database/all
-
Well, given all the photos out there due to my line of work, I am thoroughly fuct!
:-P :-P :-P :x :x :x
-
Video at the link:
http://www.thewhatifconference.com/wi/technology_has_killed_privacy
A famous professor speaks to his class on a crucial topic.
Dr. Tobias Gibson, Westminster College, Fulton MO
(Some here may recognize him.)
I am impressed with the way his class is paying attention.
-
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/state-of-california-secretly-collecting-blooddna-of-all-babies-since-1983/
-
Urban Terror will Usher in Next Gen Surveillance State
Posted: 16 Nov 2015 02:45 PM PST
The effectiveness of blood and guts terrorism isn't found in the physical and psychological damage it does.
It's found in the reaction it provokes.
With this in mind, will the Paris attacks provoke a reaction that makes them effective?
I think so.
Over the long run, the Paris attacks of 2015 (and those that follow) will be seen as the start of a shift to the next generation surveillance state in the US, China, and Europe.
Due to a revolutionary technological change currently underway, it will be possible to add pervasive physical surveillance to the proven systems of electronic surveillance (voice, email, chat, etc.) already in use.
This new capability will make it possible to deploy a cognitive sensor network that will:
1. "know" who everyone in an urban area is (if you ever had a picture taken, it will likely "know" who you are),
2. simultaneously track where everyone in a city is (and has been), and
3. understand what everyone in the city is doing (from voice to behavior capture/analysis).
Further, this network will learn. It will get continuously better with experience.
It will also be proactive. For example, if it finds a gap in its coverage, it can actively move cognitive sensors to cover the gap (even penetrating structures to gather information).
Sincerely,
John Robb
-
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/15/exploiting-emotions-about-paris-to-blame-snowden-distract-from-actual-culprits-who-empowered-isis/
-
Some followup on the Ted Cruz Intel discussion...
The intel experts say the metadata, in conjunction wit other resources, has value, so the issue of concern is privacy.
I wish for all the privacy from government (and from corporations) that I can get. And that I have lost 99.9% of it already doesn't justify losing more.
Look at what privacy that belongs to us that government already has access to. Has anyone ever been audited by the IRS? It's been a while for me, but don't they already have the power to know everything about every dollar that came in from every source and all the details about all potential income producing assets you own. Has anyone ever been through FAFSA process (federal student loan program)? They go further and get to know even about your non-income producing assets. Most families really can't just decline the process when the product is priced such that 97% of the applicants (at some schools) need and receive assistance. I've been audited by the US Dept of HUD. What they are allowed to ask of me is amazing and scary and once they opened an inquiry it went full course even though I could easily prove the allegation false. In my case, who are all the people you've rented to at all your properties, who are all your ownership partners and let's open an investigation against them too, in light of the fact that the original complaint could be proven false in minutes.
So-called Metadata is so voluminous that it is worthless (IMO) to the nefarious compared to other much more specific data that is within a much easier reach.
From the other thread: "Balance that [intel and security interests] against Hillary having access to everyone's phone calls and emails."
Mis-use of the metadata is a Federal crime. Yes there are Snowdens (He would be in a US prison by now if we had a President). Yes there are bureaucratic bunglings of safeguards and the potential for worse. But I think in terms of violation our privacy, this is a small loss and worth it IF it has value tracking terror connections in conjunction with other resources.
For more than 10 years, NSA has had the database of what numbers connected to what numbers, what emails connected to what emails. Meanwhile your carrier (and Google, Apple, etc.) had the content of those communications as well as your current location and location history, everything you have searched and everywhere you have visited on the internet. Your device/smartphone carries most of that same information or access to it and is an easier source to it for your potential enemy/adversary than NSA metadata. To me, that is where the main risk of mis-use lies.
I have as big a mistrust of government and as big a revulsion of our privacy loss as anyone (I think), but I don't see this piece of the puzzle at anywhere near the level of concern that people like Rand Paul make it out to be. My distrust extends to the giant carriers as well, so containing our lost privacy over there, where the government has access to it anyway, is a Pyrrhic victory, IMHO.
If there is something in the metadata to be tracked for terror connections, I want it tracked and tracked better, not made harder to track without giving back any of our lost privacy.. But that's just me...
-
For future reference bringing GM's post over to here-- this is some very interesting stuff!
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/isis-opsec-encryption-manuals-reveal-terrorist-group-security-protocols/
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/08/world-of-jihadcraft
-
They'll keep tilting at windmills nonetheless, because that's what political elites do:
https://reason.com/archives/2015/11/24/ban-encryption-its-an-impossible-idea-wh
-
http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2015/11/kids-toys-are-recording-and.html?m=1
-
:-o :-o :-o :x :x :x
-
https://medium.com/@nselby/los-angeles-just-proposed-the-worst-use-of-license-plate-reader-data-in-history-702c35733b50#.v2683bt29
Los Angeles Just Proposed the Worst Use of License Plate Reader Data in History.
Last month, when I spoke on a panel called “Spying in Public: Policy and Practice” at the 25th Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in Washington, DC, we were embroiled in a discussion of license plate readers. As a law enforcement technologist, and a working police detective, I generally support the use of license plate readers. I discussed at the conference a child pornography case in which the suspect (now indicted) had fled the city and the police located him using the technology.
From the back of the room came the comment, “The issue is the potentially chilling effect that this technology has on freedom of association and freedom of transportation.”
That’s literally the phrase that leapt into my mind when I read the monumentally over-reaching idea posed by Nury Martinez, a 6th district Los Angeles city councilwoman, to access a database of license plates captured in certain places around the city, translate these license plates to obtain the name and address of each owner, and send to that owner a letter explaining that the vehicle was seen in, “an area known for prostitution.”
Councilwoman Nury Martinez
Councilwoman Martinez feels that prostitution is not a “victimless” crime, and that by discouraging johns, the incidence of the crime can be reduced. Martinez told CBS Los Angeles, “If you aren’t soliciting, you have no reason to worry about finding one of these letters in your mailbox. But if you are, these letters will discourage you from returning. Soliciting for sex in our neighborhoods is not OK.”
The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to ask the office of the District Attorney for their help implementing the plan.
Have Ms. Martinez and the Los Angeles City Council taken leave of their senses? This scheme makes, literally, a state issue out of legal travel to arbitrary places deemed by some — but not by a court, and without due process — to be “related” to crime in general, not to any specific crime.
There isn’t “potential” for abuse here, this is a legislated abuse of technology that is already controversial when it’s used by police for the purpose of seeking stolen vehicles, tracking down fugitives and solving specific crimes.
It is theoretically possible that a law enforcement officer could observe an area he understands to be known for prostitution, and, upon seeing a vehicle driving in a certain manner, or stopping in front of suspected or known prostitutes, based on his reasonable suspicion that he bases on his analysis of the totality of these specific circumstances, the officer could speak with the driver to investigate. This is very uncommon, because it would take a huge amount of manpower and time.
The City Council and Ms. Martinez seek to “automate” this process of reasonable suspicion (reducing it to mere presence at a certain place), and deploy it on a massive scale. They then seek to take this much further, through a highly irresponsible (and probably illegal) action that could have significant consequences on the recipient of such a letter — and they have absolutely no legal standing to write, let alone send it. There are grave issues of freedom of transportation and freedom of association here.
Guilt by association would be a higher standard.
Worse, they seek to use municipal funds to take action against those guilty of nothing other than traveling legally on city streets, then access the state-funded Department of Motor Vehicle registration records to resolve the owner data, then use municipal moneys to write, package and pay the United States Postal Service to deliver a letter that is at best a physical manifestation of the worst kind of Digital McCarthyism. There are clearly Constitutional issues here.
Oh, and what happens to those records once they are committed to paper? As letters sent by the District Attorney or City Council, they would be rightly subject to Freedom of Information Laws. And mandatory retention periods that exceed those of automated license plate data, even though no investigation has been consummated.
Which means that, under Councilwoman Martinez’ scheme, anyone will be able to get a list of all vehicles driving in certain parts of town merely by requesting “all ‘John’ letters sent” between a date range.
Far from serving as, in the words of one proponent, a private “wake-up call,” these letters will surely be the basis of insurance, medical, employment and other decisions, and such a list can be re-sold to public records companies, advertising mailing list companies…the list is, literally, endless.
This wrong-headed law has, out of the gate, a chilling effect on association and transport.
No non-fascist state should ever allow this to happen.
-
https://www.facebook.com/senatormikelee/videos/1051049141593445/
-
By L. Gordon Crovitz
Dec. 20, 2015 4:15 p.m. ET
50 COMMENTS
The massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., came a few days after a law went into effect banning access by intelligence agencies to key digital communications. It is time for the U.S. to get ahead of terrorism by finally allowing its intelligence agents to use digital tools before the next attack.
Soon after the San Bernardino massacre, law-enforcement agents discovered digital records left behind by Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik. If intelligence agencies had been allowed access to the information in real time, the terrorist attack might have been prevented.
Politics forces the National Security Agency to operate with blinders. The Obama administration blocked the agency from its post-9/11 practice of collecting metadata—tracking digital data on an anonymous basis, and then seeking a court order if Americans are involved—for emails and other digital communications. The law that went into effect just before the San Bernardino killings ended direct NSA access to historic phone records.
Despite concerns that terrorists can use encryption to stay dark, the unencrypted digital records make clear that Farook and Malik could have been discovered if the NSA had been allowed access to metadata:
At least since 2010, Farook and his neighbor Enrique Marquez watched Islamist videos on the Internet and read online magazines published by overseas terror groups. A few weeks before the massacre, Mr. Marquez said on Facebook, “My life turned ridiculous,” including becoming “involved in terrorist plots.” He was arrested last week on charges including conspiring to support terrorists. Intelligence agencies could have monitored his trail of videos, online magazines and Facebook posts.
Malik left her own digital tracks disclosing her Islamist beliefs and terrorist intentions before she applied for a visa to move to the U.S. Authorities have found messages Malik sent to friends on Facebook in 2012 and 2014 pledging support for jihad and for joining the fight.
The New York Times recently cited intelligence sources describing the couple bonding over jihad before they met, sharing their commitment to terror “on an online messaging platform, as well as emails and communications on a dating site.” FBI Director James Comey said the couple was “communicating online, showing signs in that communication of their joint commitment to jihad and martyrdom.”
A former undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security, John Cohen, last week disclosed to ABC News that “immigration officials were not allowed to use or view social media as part of the screening process” when Malik’s application was processed. The agency, he said, worried about the “optics” of monitoring digital communications. A DHS spokesman said the policy is under review, while still taking “into account civil rights and civil liberties and privacy protections.” The DHS apparently doesn’t know that foreigners seeking visas have no such rights under the U.S. Constitution.
Metadata was a hot topic in last week’s Republican presidential debate, with Marco Rubio blasting Ted Cruz and Rand Paul for supporting the Obama bill limiting access to phone records, which Hillary Clinton also supported. This increasingly looks like a wedge issue on the Republican side.
Much of the criticism of metadata collection came in the wake of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s feverish accusations against U.S. intelligence in 2013. But despite the many stolen documents he revealed, Mr. Snowden showed no wrongdoing by NSA employees using metadata. Only 22 NSA officials had this authority, overseen by 300 compliance officers, a special court and the political branches of government.
The Fourth Amendment protects Americans only from “unreasonable” searches. The Founders intended reasonableness based on the circumstances. Courts have ruled that citizens have no expectation of privacy for bank records, phone calls, fingerprints, DNA or Facebook posts. In 2013 New York Federal Appeals Court Judge William Pauley confirmed the legality of collecting telephone metadata, noting in his opinion that such collection doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment—and he went out of his way to say that 9/11 might haven been prevented if intelligence agencies had been collecting and analyzing metadata before the terror attacks.
Americans lose no privacy by allowing access to anonymous data, which when used properly only identifies suspects for courts to consider. “This blunt tool only works because it collects everything,” Judge Pauley wrote. “Without all the data points, the government cannot be certain it connected the pertinent ones.”
The choice is more metadata or more San Bernardinos.
Voters can now compare candidates according to their view of reasonableness: Is it more reasonable to let terrorists plan in secret or to let intelligence agencies have access to tools that could be at their disposal? Is it more reasonable to have intelligence agents gather data before attacks happen or only when it is too late?
-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/the-new-way-police-are-surveilling-you-calculating-your-threat-score/2016/01/10/e42bccac-8e15-11e5-baf4-bdf37355da0c_story.html?tid=ss_fb-bottom
-
http://www.vocativ.com/news/275331/the-search-engine-for-webcams
-
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/feds-banks-inform-law-enforcement-customers-depositingwithdrawing-5000-cash
-
Former NSA Chief Skeptical of FBI's Backdoor Demand
When news broke last week that the FBI was demanding a backdoor into the iPhone of a San Bernardino terrorist, we cautioned that doing so wasn't just a case of breaking into just this one phone this one time. The FBI was really asking two things: a backdoor to iPhones in general, and a legal precedent for using it. Apple is fighting the demand.
They're not alone. No less than Michael Hayden, the former chief of both the NSA and CIA as well as a retired four-star Air Force general, isn't convinced the government is right. "In this specific case," he said, "I'm trending toward the government, but I've got to tell you in general I oppose the government's effort, personified by FBI Director Jim Comey. Jim would like a backdoor available to American law enforcement in all devices globally. And, frankly, I think on balance that actually harms American safety and security, even though it might make Jim's job a bit easier in some specific circumstances."
Indeed, the government has more phones for Apple to crack.
Hayden also said rather honestly, "Look, I used to run the NSA, okay? Backdoors are good. Please, please, Lord, put back doors in, because I and a whole bunch of other talented security services around the world — even though that back door was not intended for me — that backdoor will make it easier for me to do what I want to do, which is to penetrate. ... But when you step back and look at the whole question of American security and safety writ large, we are a safer, more secure nation without backdoors [because] a lot of other people would take advantage of it."
And speaking of precedents, Apple CEO Tim Cook noted, "If a court can ask us to write this piece of software, think about what else they could ask us to write. Maybe it's an operating system for surveillance. Maybe it's the ability for law enforcement to turn on the camera. I mean I don't know where this stops." In other words, what is the limiting principle for government power?
Perhaps that's one reason why Apple's already developing a way to thwart the workaround the FBI seeks...
-
https://www.facebook.com/senatormikelee/videos/1099048543460171/
-
So all that spying on Americans that wasn't relevant as all the data just sat there unexamined until a specific national security need arose . . . can now be accessed by law enforcement agencies for investigations not related to national security matters. Who could see that one coming?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/03/10/surprise-nsa-data-will-soon-routinely-be-used-for-domestic-policing-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-terrorism/
-
Some days it can be pretty discouraging , , ,
-
So all that spying on Americans that wasn't relevant as all the data just sat there unexamined until a specific national security need arose . . . can now be accessed by law enforcement agencies for investigations not related to national security matters. Who could see that one coming?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/03/10/surprise-nsa-data-will-soon-routinely-be-used-for-domestic-policing-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-terrorism/
First, consider the source. Second, as far as state and local law enforcement goes, the FBI has long been known as a black hole where information goes and none ever emerges from.
-
Washington's desire to monitor its citizens is nothing new, nor is principled opposition to it:
http://reason.com/archives/2016/03/19/the-man-j-edgar-hoover-blamed
-
Manhattan Beach neighbors Hermosa Beach. This is from the local paper.
http://www.easyreadernews.com/126456/local-government-15/?utm_source=Daily+News&utm_campaign=3fbec38819-Daily_EMAIL_NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b41a925468-3fbec38819-286697493
-
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/schumer-spying-billboards-investigate/2016/05/01/id/726605/
-
http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-google-knows-about-you-2016-5?r=UK&IR=T
-
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/05/20/smart-tvs-webcams-allow-access-peeping-toms/
Retro-tech may well be the way to go.
-
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/05/25/1457246/facebook-could-be-eavesdropping-on-your-phone-calls
Creepy.
-
I am glad others get to see what it is like to be eavesdropped on all the time.
But this:
"The results were shocking, as less than 60 seconds later, the first post on her Facebook feed was about a safari story out of nowhere, which was then revealed that the story had been posted three hours earlier. And, after mentioning a jeep, a car ad also appeared on her page.
On a support page, Facebook explains how this feature works: "No, we don't record your conversations. If you choose to turn on this feature, we'll only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify. If this feature is turned on, it's only active when you're writing a status update." I wonder how many people are actually aware of this."
The explanation on the support page says they don't *record*. Well they must be using some speech recognition then since the author was hinting around by speaking not listening or watching.
Are you happy that little shit Fucker berg has this much power? I am not. These tech companies often try to qualify it as though we have some sort of option to turn it off or opt out when in truth no one ever knows or is for that matter notified that they are eavesdropping.
Frankly I would like to see regulation (I know an ugly word around here) that makes it necessary for users to be made aware of how, when , why we are being surveillanced.
-
Snowden Interview
[youtube]ucRWyGKBVzo[/youtube]
-
https://readfomag.com/2016/08/dhs-to-roll-out-new-orwellian-intelligence-program/
DHS to Roll Out New Orwellian Intelligence Program
5912385701_470d2b97ac_b
The Department of Homeland Security is spending $40 million dollars to fund a “quantitative analysis” program for its Science and Technology Directorate. In a grant proposal published this month, DHS calls on colleges and universities to submit plans to support the Center for Homeland Security Quantitative Analysis.
According to the documents, grant winners will support “real-time decision making to address homeland security-related threats and hazards” by conducting research and developing “mission-relevant science and technology.”
“It is DHS’s intent to produce new capabilities and work with partners and stakeholders at all levels to test these capabilities in operational and strategic settings, and then take steps to make these solutions available and useful to agencies at all levels.”
If it sounds Orwellian, it’s because it is Orwellian. It’s no secret that DHS faces more challenges than it can handle. When we talk about intelligence and complex problems, I often bring up efficiency. In order to compete, organizations have to be efficient, otherwise they fall behind, and inefficiencies are a great contributor to falling behind. Analysis is nearly always the bottleneck in the flow of information to decision makers. Organizations can collect massive amounts of data, but it’s rarely useful until the information is evaluated by an analyst. A shortage of analysts typically leads to a shortage of analysis. When decision makers don’t have evaluated information and insight into the data — what we can call “intelligence” — they often make poor decisions.
The Center for Homeland Security Quantitative Analysis (CHSQA) shall develop the next generation of mathematical, computational, and statistical theories, as well as algorithms, methods, and tools to advance the quantitative analysis capabilities [of DHS].
For the past ten years, organizations have been realizing that the solution to that bottleneck is Big Data analytics — or “quantitative analysis”. The DHS Quantitative Analysis program is a big data approach to problem-solving that requires massive amounts of data (open source information, especially social media) being fed into databases for storage, retrieval, and analysis. Algorithms will scan and organize data, find patterns, and then direct analysts to high priority data points. This greatly speeds up the analysis process — removing the traditional bottleneck — because analysts no longer have to sift through all the collected data. In other words, this technology will help sift through the haystack and deliver some needles to the analyst.
There’s no doubt that DHS is becoming a domestic intelligence agency. Whatever reason DHS was created — ostensibly to find terrorists and keep the homeland secure — it’s taking steps that should give us pause. Does DHS really need these capabilities?
But perhaps the most troubling part of this project is that DHS asks:
At what point do private individuals accept biometrics and data collection as an accepted social process?
Biometrics is going to have a profound and growing impact on American society, as foreshadowed by the desire of DHS to normalize biometric collection of Americans. I should know. My last assignment was a Senior Analyst on the Defense Department’s Biometrics Intelligence Program where we tracked down insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By collecting location information (via cell phones, for instance), social media posts and other open source information, along with biometrics, DHS is going to be able to build a pattern of life analysis for any member of the public. (To see part of what that looks like, see SPACE Analysis.) America is entering a Brave New World.
Grant proposals for the Center of Excellence for Homeland Security Quantitative Analysis must be submitted by November. You can download the Grant Opportunity here
-
:-o :-o :-o
-
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2016/08/25/stop-what-youre-doing-and-update-your-iphone-right-now/?singlepage=true
-
http://weaponsman.com/?p=34822
Covert.
-
:-o :-o :-o
-
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/20/evidence-fbi-gathered-while-running-porn-site-thrown-out-again/
-
I'm guessing the courts that held for the FBI said something to the effect that by going to the site the defendants entered into the jurisdiction of the court issuing the warrant.
-
http://dailysignal.com/2016/12/05/in-key-decision-dc-court-upholds-fourth-amendment/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Top5&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTjJFM1pEZzRaakV3TWpWaCIsInQiOiJmd0daWmhRUloyMHdoNTJxRHdETEFOUzgwNjY0UUJDTkNSd0VkRmVOa3pHaTRWdEt4cmcwcHc3TkRNY1ZRdTBBTWRuSEUzZUgrbkFRYUMyXC8ycllkcHd0bm9sWVRORVdteUVOcjhnVzhudGtTNktqeUZ1VUg0YkVIQUdMVEQ1Nm8ifQ%3D%3D
-
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/12/16/fl-court-rules-police-can-compel-suspect-to-unlock-cell-phone/
-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2017/01/08/a-lawyer-rewrote-instagrams-terms-of-use-in-plain-english-so-kids-would-know-their-privacy-rights/?utm_term=.28ec03c5772e&wpisrc=nl_wemost&wpmm=1
-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/01/12/youve-probably-never-heard-of-this-creepy-genealogy-site-but-its-heard-all-about-you/?utm_term=.9e49ab866698&wpisrc=nl_wemost&wpmm=1
-
http://www.kimdutoit.com/2017/02/24/no-just-no/
No. Just… NO.
February 24, 2017 Kim du Toit Bad News
Via Insty, I discovered this little beast lurking in the bushes. The piece is entitled, “The race for autonomous cars is over. Silicon Valley lost” and is about how Silicon Valley won’t be able to challenge Detroit / Wolfsburg / Stuttgart / Tokyo in the manufacture of autonomous cars. Don’t care about any of that. No, the turd in the punchbowl actually comes towards the end of the article:
There is another area where Silicon Valley could play a dominant role and it’s all about accessing car-based data.
One billion people get in and out of a car every single day. They go to work, they go home, they shop, they play, they do a billion different things. Knowing where they’re going and what they’re doing can be very valuable. That data can be aggregated, sorted, and packaged. And then it can be sold to anyone.
Unlike automotive manufacturing, Big Data analytics driven by Artificial Intelligence does not require large capital investments in factories and equipment. That translates into meaty profit margins, reportedly as high as 90%.
There are basically two sets of data. One set is generated by the car, such as how all the parts and components are performing and how well the car is running. That allows automakers to mine the data for a variety of uses, such as trend analysis to quickly identify warranty issues or learn how to set more effective engineering specifications.
The other set of data is generated by the people in the car; a massive amount of information flowing in and out about where they’re going and what they’re doing. Last year in the U.S. market alone Chevrolet collected 4,220 terabytes of data from customer’s cars. McKinsey forecasts that this could grow into a $450 to 750 billion market by 2030. Retailers, advertisers, marketers, product planners, financial analysts, government agencies, and so many others will eagerly pay to get access to that information. And it’s a gift that keeps on giving. You can sell the same data again, again and again to a variety of different customers.
I have no absolutely problem with the first data set; if it’s to do with improving the car and its manufacturer’s business, I’m all for it.
I have an enormous problem with the second data set. Here’s why.
As Longtime Readers already know, I used to work in the supermarket loyalty program business; you know, those annoying little cards you have to use to get discounts when you check out of the big supermarkets. (Basically, the supermarket is paying you for your shopping data, which they mostly use to improve things like stock re-ordering, shelf management and pricing strategy. That’s the equivalent of Data Set #1, above.) Let me be perfectly frank about this: I don’t know a great deal about a lot of things, but I know absolutely everything about customer data collection and -marketing. Over a period of five years, I set up data collection methodology and designed databases, reporting systems and marketing programs for a number of supermarket chains all over the United States. Trust me, I know whereof I speak on this topic.
Which is why I look on this Data Set #2 from the automotive industry with alarm and absolute hostility. One of the rules I set up right at the beginning of any loyalty program was that the data didn’t belong to the supermarket chain; it belonged to the customer. Once aggregated, of course, the data became ours — but individual transaction data was absolutely untouchable. We could not release any individual’s data to anyone without that customer’s explicit and specific approval — several times, I refused “requests” (demands) from divorce attorneys and once, yes, from a government agency, to have access to individuals’ shopping data.
Now compare and contrast that policy, if you will, with this breezy attitude towards data sharing:
Retailers, advertisers, marketers, product planners, financial analysts, government agencies, and so many others will eagerly pay to get access to that information. And it’s a gift that keeps on giving. You can sell the same data again, again and again to a variety of different customers.
I have often cautioned people about this trend towards autonomous cars. Yes, it means that you don’t have to worry your pretty / pointy little head about that messy driving business while you grapple with WOW Level 13 — but what you’re doing, in essence, is giving up control of the car to someone else. (And you can dress it up with all the IT gobbledygook about “algorithms”, “AI” and “predictive planning” you want; I’ll still tell you to blow it out your ass, because at the end of the day, someone not you is going to control your actions.)
Now this. Note that in the excerpt above, the lovely little term “government agencies” is inserted right next to “and so many others” like it’s not just another fucking tool whereby the goddamn government can observe and yes, later control your actions.
One of my heroes is a man named John Cowperthwaite, who was the governor-general of Hong Kong during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and who was responsible for the greatest improvement of a country’s living conditions in history. Here was Cowperthwaite’s take on government data collection (which he expressly forbade, by the way), as told to Milton Friedman:
“I remember asking [Cowperthwaite] about the paucity of statistics. He answered,’If I let them compute those statistics, they’ll want to use them for planning.'”
If it were just planning, I might be okay with it. But what Cowperthwaite suspected, and what I know for a fact, is that governmental “planning” inevitably leads to government control. Information is everything, and we now live in the Information Age. Sometimes I wish we didn’t, because the vast mass of people just don’t care or are completely ignorant of this danger.
Here’s my last thought (for now) on this topic. The automobile was for decades a symbol of an individual’s independence. In his car, a man could drive wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted, for whatever reason he wanted, and for as long as he wanted — all without anyone but himself being any the wiser. Now, under the guise of “autonomy”, this freedom is going to be taken away from us. (At this point, George Orwell is laughing his ass off. “Freedom is Slavery”, remember?)
I once said that if I could choose the way I die, it would either be in my wife’s arms or on the barricades. Well, that first option has been taken from me, which means that if I die, it will be in a pitched gun battle with government agents who are trying to take away my old car and forcing me to use Government Autonomous Vehicle Mk. VII — and if you think I’m joking, I’m not. Fuck this bullshit.
-
Papers, Please
Passengers on a domestic flight deplaning in New York were asked to present ID by Customs and Border Protection agents—a likely unenforceable demand that nevertheless diminishes freedom.
Feb 27, 2017 Politics
Subscribe to The Atlantic’s Politics & Policy Daily, a roundup of ideas and events in American politics.
American citizens had their introduction to the Trump-era immigration machine Wednesday, when Customs and Border Protection agents met an airliner that had just landed at New York’s JFK airport after a flight from San Francisco. According to passenger accounts, a flight attendant announced that all passengers would have to show their “documents” as they deplaned, and they did. The reason for the search, Homeland Security officials said, was to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a search for a specific immigrant who had received a deportation order after multiple criminal convictions. The target was not on the flight.
After days of research, I can find no legal authority for ICE or CBP to require passengers to show identification on an entirely domestic fight. The ICE authorizing statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1357, provides that agents can conduct warrantless searches of “any person seeking admission to the United States”—if, that is, the officer has “reasonable cause to suspect” that the individual searched may be deportable. CBP’s statute, 19 U.S.C. § 1467, grants search authority “whenever a vessel from a foreign port or place or from a port or place in any Territory or possession of the United States arrives at a port or place in the United States.” CBP regulations, set out at 19 C.F.R. § 162.6, allow agents to search “persons, baggage, and merchandise arriving in the Customs territory of the United States from places outside thereof.”
I asked two experts whether I had missed some general exception to the Fourth Amendment for passengers on a domestic flight. After all, passengers on flights entering the U.S. from other countries can expect to be asked for ID, and even searched. Barry Friedman, the Jacob D. Fuchsberg professor of law and affiliated professor of politics at New York University, is the author of Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission, a new book-length study of intrusive police investigation and search practices. “Is this remotely constitutional?” he asked. “I think it isn’t. We all know generally the government can’t come up and demand to see identification.” Officers need to have statutory authority to search and reasonable suspicion that the person to be searched has violated the law, he said. Andre Segura, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told me that “I’m not aware of any aviation exception” for domestic passengers.
An ID check is a “search” under the law. Passengers on the JFK flight were not “seeking admission”—the flight originated in the U.S. CBP officials told the public after the fact that they were looking for a specific individual believed to be on board. A search for a specific individual cannot include every person on a plane, regardless of sex, race, and age. That is a general paper check of the kind familiar to anyone who has traveled in an authoritarian country. As Segura told me, “We do not live in a ‘show me your papers’ society.”
I asked a CBP spokesperson what legal authority the agency could show for the search. In response, the spokesperson said:
In this situation, CBP was assisting ICE in locating an individual possibly aboard the flight that was ordered removed from the United States pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act. To assist ICE, CBP requested consensual assistance from passengers aboard the flight to determine whether the removable individual in question was in fact aboard the flight. In the course of seeking this assistance, CBP did not compel any of these domestic passengers to show identification. With much-appreciated cooperation from these passengers, CBP was able to resolve the issue with minimal delay to the traveling public.
It's quite legal for law enforcement to ask for “voluntary” cooperation. Anyone who follows criminal-procedure cases, however, knows that “voluntary” in legalese does not mean what ordinary people think it means. Supreme Court caselaw makes clear that officers may block an exit and ask for ID or permission to search. They aren’t required to tell the individual stopped that he or she may refuse, and they have every incentive to act as if refusal may result in arrest. The Supreme Court held in 1984 that “while most citizens will respond to a police request, the fact that people do so, and do so without being told they are free not to respond, hardly eliminates the consensual nature of the response.” Passengers deplaning after a long flight might reasonably fear they will be “detained” if they anger the law enforcement figure blocking their exit. That officer is under no obligation to tell them they can refuse.
I am a white, English-speaking law professor, affluent, privileged, articulate, and a native-born citizen. Such hair as I have is white and I can hardly seem like a threat to anyone. I have researched the matter, and feel reasonably confident that an agent would have to let me pass if I refused the demand for my papers. If not, I can afford counsel and my family knows excellent lawyers to call.
I am vowing here and now not to show papers in this situation. I know that it will take gumption to follow through if the situation arises. What will be the reaction of ordinary travelers, some with outstanding warrants or other legal worries? Should we expect heroism of people who just want to get off an airplane?
Justice William O. Douglas once wrote that a regime of liberty includes “freedom from bodily restraint or compulsion, freedom to walk, stroll, or loaf.”
A shadow is falling over that freedom, both for aliens and for citizens. Its loss will be devastating.
-
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/03/whole-point-internet-things-big-brother-can-spy-2.html
The Whole POINT of the Internet of Things Is So Big Brother Can Spy On You
Posted on March 15, 2017 by WashingtonsBlog
No One Wants the Internet of Things …
No one wants the Internet of Things (IoT).
The Washington Post noted in 2014:
No one really wants a “smart” washing machine ….
***
If you’re wondering who would want to buy an Internet-enabled washing machine, you’re not alone. Even Whirlpool’s not so sure.
“We’re a little bit of a hammer looking for a nail right now,” Chris Quatrochi, Whirlpool’s global director of user experience and connectivity, said last week at a conference hosted by tech blog Gigaom. The buyers of web-connected washers, more than a year after launch, are still “not at all widespread,” he said. “Trying to understand exactly the value proposition that you provide to the consumer,” he said, “has been a little bit of a challenge.”
It’s a big concession from one of the most notable champions of the buzzy “Internet of Things” ….
As Digital Trends blogger John Sciacca put it: “Have we gotten so pathetically lame that you need to be notified by an email that your laundry is done?”
Wired jokes:
Now it seems every kind of thing from dishwashers to doorknobs require an Internet connection, since after all, we all know our dishwashers have long harbored a pent up desire for scintillating conversation with our doorknobs.
… Except Big Brother
The government is already spying on us through spying on us through our computers, phones, cars, buses, streetlights, at airports and on the street, via mobile scanners and drones, through our credit cards and smart meters (see this), television, doll, and in many other ways.
The CIA wants to spy on you through your dishwasher and other “smart” appliances. Slate reported in 2012:
Watch out: the CIA may soon be spying on you—through your beloved, intelligent household appliances, according to Wired.
In early March, at a meeting for the CIA’s venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, CIA Director David Petraeus reportedly noted that “smart appliances” connected to the Internet could someday be used by the CIA to track individuals. If your grocery-list-generating refrigerator knows when you’re home, the CIA could, too, by using geo-location data from your wired appliances, according to SmartPlanet.
“The current ‘Internet of PCs’ will move, of course, toward an ‘Internet of Things’—of devices of all types—50 to 100 billion of which will be connected to the Internet by 2020,” Petraeus said in his speech. He continued:
Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters—all connected to the next-generation Internet using abundant, low cost, and high-power computing—the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.
Last year, U.S. Intelligence Boss James Clapper said that the government will spy on Americans through IoT:
In the future, intelligence services might use the [IoT] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials.
Yves Smith commented at the time:
Oh, come on. The whole point of the IoT is spying. The officialdom is just trying to persuade you that it really is a big consumer benefit to be able to tell your oven to start heating up before you get home.
Wired comments:
Why do you think there are so many buckets of cash pouring into the IoT hope-to-be-a-market? The Big Corporations don’t expect to make a big profit on the devices themselves, oh no. News flash: the Big Money in IoT is in Big Data. As in, Big Data about everything those sensors are learning about you and your nasty habits that you hide from your neighbors.
The value of Big Data, after all, aren’t the data themselves. “Fred’s car told Fred’s thermostat to turn on Fred’s hot tub” doesn’t interest anybody but Fred and perhaps his hot date (if he’s lucky). The value in Big Data, you see, are in the patterns. What shows you watch. What apps you use. Which ads influence your buying behavior. The more IoT you have, the more Big Data they collect, and the more Big Data they collect, the more they know about how you behave. And once they know how you behave, they know how to control how you behave.
The Guardian notes:
As a category, the internet of things is useful to eavesdroppers both official and unofficial for a variety of reasons, the main one being the leakiness of the data.
***
There are a wide variety of devices that can be used to listen in, and some compound devices (like cars) that have enough hardware to form a very effective surveillance suite all by themselves.
***
There’s no getting around the fundamental creepiness of the little pinhole cameras in new smart TVs (and Xbox Kinects, and laptops, and cellphones), but the less-remarked-on aspect – the audio – may actually be more pertinent to anyone with a warrant trying to listen in. Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society observed that Samsung’s voice recognition software in its smart TVs had to routinely send various commands “home” to a server where they were processed for relevant information; their microphones are also always on, in case you’re trying to talk to them. Televisions are also much easier to turn on than they used to be: a feature creeping into higher-end TVs called “wake on LAN” allows users to power on televisions over the internet (this is already standard on many desktop PCs).
***
A cyberattack on toymaker VTech exposed the personal data of 6.4m children last year; it was a sobering reminder of the vulnerability of kids on the web. But technology waits for no man. Mattel’s Hello Barbie doll works the same way the Nest and Samsung voice operators do, by passing kids’ interactions into the cloud and returning verbal responses through a speaker in the doll. HereO manufactures a watch for kids with a GPS chip in it; Fisher-Price makes a WiFi-enabled stuffed animal. Security researchers at Rapid7 looked at both and found that they were easy to compromise on company databases, and in the case of the watch, use to locate the wearer.
In a separate article, the Guardian pointed out:
Just a few weeks ago, a security researcher found that Google’s Nest thermostats were leaking users’ zipcodes over the internet. There’s even an entire search engine for the internet of things called Shodan that allows users to easily search for unsecured webcams that are broadcasting from inside people’s houses without their knowledge.
While people voluntarily use all these devices, the chances are close to zero that they fully understand that a lot of their data is being sent back to various companies to be stored on servers that can either be accessed by governments or hackers.
***
Author and persistent Silicon Valley critic Evgeny Morozov summed up the entire problem with the internet of things and “smart” technology in a tweet last week:
In case you are wondering what “smart” – as in “smart city” or “smart home” – means:
Surveillance
Marketed
As
Revolutionary
Technology
https://twitter.com/evgenymorozov/status/693958196717711362
(And see Amazon Echo and the internet of things that spy on you.)
In the wake of the CIA leaks showing that the agency can remotely turn on our tvs and spy on us using a “fake off” mode so that it looks like the power is off, Tech Dirt wrote in an article called CIA Leaks Unsurprisingly Show The Internet Of Broken Things Is A Spy’s Best Friend:
The security and privacy standards surrounding the internet of (broken) things sit somewhere between high comedy and dogshit.
As security expert Bruce Schneier points out, the entire concept of the IoT is wildly insecure and vulnerable to hacking. Indeed, Iot is so insecure that it allowed a massive internet outage.
The highest-level NSA whistleblower in history (William Binney) – the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, and managed thousands of NSA employees – reviewed an earlier version of this post, and told Washington’s Blog:
Yep, that summarizes it fairly well. It does not deal with industry or how they will use the data; but, that will probably be an extension of what they do now. This whole idea of monitoring electronic devices is objectionable.
If forced to buy that stuff, I will do my best to disconnect these monitoring devices also look for equipment on the market that is not connected in any way.
-
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/supreme-court-cell-phone-privacy-searches
-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/28/two-activists-who-filmed-undercover-videos-of-planned-parenthood-charged-with-15-felonies/?utm_term=.18f7f85d32e7&wpisrc=nl_&wpmm=1
-
http://www.anonews.co/secretive-spy-us/
-
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/27/us-facial-recognition-database-fbi-drivers-licenses-passports
-
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/27/us-facial-recognition-database-fbi-drivers-licenses-passports
Well, at least the FBI is apolitical, with impeccable leadership... :cry:
-
https://patriotpost.us/posts/48261
-
Michael Savage mentioned this last week and questioned it. He wondered why they would do this. This is opposite of personal freedom. I think this is a very bad move. Sounds like a give away to business interests while sacrificing everyone else's personal freedom.
So we can scream about government collecting and spying on us but it is ok for private firms to collect all our data and sell it for their benefit without us getting any say in the matter.
:x
-
Michael Savage mentioned this last week and questioned it. He wondered why they would do this. This is opposite of personal freedom. I think this is a very bad move. Sounds like a give away to business interests while sacrificing everyone else's personal freedom.
So we can scream about government collecting and spying on us but it is ok for private firms to collect all our data and sell it for their benefit without us getting any say in the matter.
:x
Well, you only have the privacy you fight for. Most thoughtlessly give it away every day.
-
http://www.vocativ.com/425482/facebook-tracking-friend-requests/
Here’s How Facebook Knows Who You Meet In Real Life
It may seem like Mark Zuckerburg is personally tracking your every move — but there's another explanation for those creepy friend requests you're getting
Social Media
Photo Illustration: Diana Quach
By Alejandro Alba
May 16, 2017 at 12:15 PM ET
A couple months ago a friend and I went to Colombia for vacation. While we were at the beach one day, we met a group of people and spent several hours hanging out with them. We never exchanged phone numbers or email addresses, we didn’t share much information about ourselves other than our names and where we lived, and we didn’t connect on social media. I didn’t even have my phone on me at the time. However, when I got back to New York and checked Facebook, I saw that two of the people we met popped up in my “People You May Know” recommendations. Weird, I thought. Actually, it’s creepy. Is Facebook tracking my every step?
Facebook’s brand is based on the community it creates, and its mission is to connect everybody in the world. So it only makes sense that the platform frequently suggests new friends for users to add to their networks. But in the past, the company’s suggestions for connecting users have raised some eyebrows.
For example, take the story about a psychiatrist who claimed her patients were popping up on her list of suggested friends (and on each other’s lists) after visiting her office, which is obviously problematic for medical privacy reasons. The psychiatrist is far from the only Facebook user to discover mysterious friend suggestions — for years there have been stories of people who go on dates, attend parties or browse through a book store only to see people they interacted with in person pop up in their Facebook at a later date. None of these connections are coincidences, of course. So how does it happen?
Just how the company goes about identifying potential new connections — especially when the users have no obvious digital connection to one another — isn’t always clear. The first possible reason, and most likely, for someone to appear in your “People You May Know” list is that one of you searched for the other, according to Facebook. So if Angel and Angie (two random strangers) go on a blind date and Angel searches Facebook for Angie’s profile, but doesn’t add her as a friend, Facebook will suggest both add each other. It only takes one person to trigger the algorithm.
Another possible explanation is that the two parties shared some type of digital information such as email or phone numbers, since most people use either to open a profile. So if you share your contacts with either Facebook or Messenger, someone you recently added to your contacts will be suggested first over someone you’ve had on your phone for years.
A Facebook spokesperson said the company does not see who users text, call or email, therefore the algorithm wouldn’t be able to make friend suggestions based on that. Yet, if you’re using email programs on your phone such as Gmail, you are saving email addresses to your phone and Facebook will be able to see them — again, only if you’re sharing your contacts with Facebook apps.
There is also a theory that Facebook tracks users’ web activity, but in a statement Facebook debunked it. Facebook apps use web cookies for targeting ads, but not for recommending new friends, a spokesperson said. Facebook also claims it no longer tracks its users with location data to rank friend suggestions based on where they live or work. The company said location tracking was just a brief test it ran last year at a very small city-wide scale.
Facebook said that its friend recommendations are based on variety of factors, which includes mutual friends, work and education information, groups you’re part of, and any digital information stored on your phone that is shared with Facebook. Other than that, Facebook deems all other connections coincidences.
Other social media platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr aren’t usually scrutinized about follow suggestions because they seem to be based on interests and mutual friends, rather than just random people you’ve met literally 10 minutes ago. Facebook, however, is not the only platform that has received criticism for the questionable ways it suggests new contacts. LinkedIn recently had to issue an apology because it pushed a new update that told iPhone users it would turn on their Bluetooth in order to share data with people nearby and “connect” them even when not using the app, if they didn’t opt out.
The update has since been “fixed” and LinkedIn apologized for confusing users, since the language used in the update did not specify which data was being shared and under what conditions. If all of this still seems freaky to you, shutting off Facebook’s access to your contacts is quite easy. All you have to do is go into your smartphone’s settings, look for your apps section, tap on Facebook and disable the “Contacts” access.
Experts also recommend that people disable Facebook from using location data, which can also be toggled under the same Settings menu. Another piece of advice for those who are concerned with privacy is logging off from Facebook whenever going to medical offices, big events, or even theme parks like Disney Land. But perhaps the most failsafe approach is just to uninstall the Facebook app from your phone and wait to see all your notifications from your desktop computer when you get home.
-
can anyone imagine the power Zuckerberg will have when , not if he runs
he will have a 100 million times more data then any DNC or RNC on voters.
-
http://circa.com/politics/declassified-memos-show-fbi-illegally-shared-spy-data-on-americans-with-private-parties
-
Supreme Court to Hear Case on Cellphone Location Data
Court to hear appeal by a defendant who was convicted based on evidence obtained from wireless service providers about his cellphone’s whereabouts
The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. Photo: yuri gripas/Reuters
By Brent Kendall
June 5, 2017 10:06 a.m. ET
47 COMMENTS
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider whether law-enforcement officials need search warrants to obtain data about the location of cellphone users, a case that raises questions about privacy rights in the digital age.
The court said it would hear an appeal by a defendant who was convicted in part based on evidence prosecutors obtained from wireless service providers about the whereabouts of his cellphone at particular times.
Timothy Carpenter was convicted of armed robberies in Michigan and Ohio, in part based on cell-site location information obtained from MetroPCS and Sprint that placed his phone in the vicinity of several robberies around the time the crimes took place.
The government didn’t obtain a search warrant for the records, which would have required a showing of probable cause to obtain the cell data. Instead, it sought and obtained the data under the Stored Communications Act, which allows law enforcers to seek records when there are reasonable grounds for believing the information is relevant to a criminal investigation.
Mr. Carpenter sought to suppress the evidence, arguing it was obtained in violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable government searches.
An appeals court ruled for the government, citing a 1979 Supreme Court ruling involving home telephone records that said people don’t enjoy Fourth Amendment protection for information they voluntarily reveal to a third party, such as a phone company.
Several lower courts have grappled with how that ruling ought to apply in today’s world, where people travel around with phones in their pockets and reveal their various locations to wireless providers as their cell signals bounce from one tower to the next.
The court will hear oral arguments during its next term, which begins in October.
-
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/live-reviews/ariana-grandes-one-love-manchester-benefit-our-report-w485769
And it felt incredibly safe. As I made my own way to the tram, I wrote in my Apple Notes app, "Helicopter hovering overhead," which to me signified that the fans were being watched over. Then two policemen stopped me and asked me who I was with and whether I'd written anything about a helicopter into my phone, without explaining the technology of how they'd read my Notes app. After a friendly back-and-forth, they looked through my bag, checked my ID and business card and determined I wasn't a threat. "You have to understand, tensions are running high," one of the men said with a smile and a handshake, allowing me through the gate. Manchester was secure tonight.
-
:-o :-o :-o
-
:-o :-o :-o
And yet, despite this ability, they did not stop the latest jihad attacks.
-
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2017/07/welcome-to-our-global-censorship-and-surveillance-platform.html
Monday, 24 July 2017
Welcome to Our Global Censorship and Surveillance Platform
I recently ran into a European counter-terrorism expert who complained that it was getting very difficult to build a fake profile on Facebook. Every time his team tried to set up a fake profile, it was shut down in less than 24 hours. Here's why he ran into problems.
Facebook has an initiative to prevent the creation fake accounts (something Facebook strangely calls recidivism).
This initiative is a small part of a larger overall effort being undertaken by Facebook, Google and others, to become what can best be described as fully functional global censorship and surveillance systems. I know that people have been concerned about this for a while, but it's not speculation anymore folks. It's here.
The surprising thing to me? The US and nearly all of the governments of the world (outside of China and Russia) are pushing them to do it.
A global censorship and surveillance platform
Here are some of the aspects of these efforts:
AIs that can identify violent imagery and extremist symbols in videos and pictures and rapidly delete them -- or better yet, block their upload or shut down a livestream as soon as they show up. For example: a live broadcast during a terrorist attack or murder (both happened).
Routine censorship and surveillance. For example: Facebook has ~7,500 (largely low paid subcontractors) reading posts and (private) messages to find and delete content they deem objectionable and ban the people who post it. However, these folks are just temporary employees. The real goal is to build AIs that can read posts and messages to ID objectionable content to do what the human team (above) is already doing, but on a global scale.
A complete social graph. A real-time census of every living person in the world (outside of China and Russia). One that knows all about you, whether or not you are on Facebook/Google/etc. These companies are already close to this goal in Europe and the US, and at 2 billion daily users (Facebook and Android), so it won't be long before they expand that to the rest of the world.
Where is this Headed?
The decline of the US security framework at home and abroad, growing political and economic instability and widespread distrust/illegitimacy will make an expansion of this platform inevitable. Let's look at this expansion from a couple of angles:
Already, the social networks are replacing the media as the gatekeepers and the shapers of national and global public opinion. It's clear that the media can't play this role anymore, they are outgunned. To wit: millions watch TV news while billions get their news from Facebook. How will they replace the media? They will use AIs to subtly block, blur or bury fake or objectionable information and conversations while promoting those they approve of. This process will become extremely apparent during the next presidential campaign. It also suggests that we will see candidates from within these companies running for office in many countries, and given their edge in using these platforms: win.
AI's built using real time and detailed social graph information could become better at detecting violent behavior far sooner and better than human analysts. Simply, it may not matter if the attackers were using Facebook or Google, the ripples from their actions on adjacent social networks might be more than enough to detect them. Pushing this forward even further, as the data flows and the depth of the information increases, how far down in the stack of violence could these AIs prove to be effective? Down to domestic murders, abuse, and rape?
A global ID. Simply, Facebook is getting close to being able to create a global ID for everyone on the planet (sans China/Russia). It's not a bit of paper or something you put in your wallet. It'll be passive. It'll replace your passport and driver's license. If you can be seen by a camera, you will be known.
Sincerely,
John Robb
-
:-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
-
http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/01/google-and-youtube-ban-prof-who-refused-to-use-gender-neutral-pronouns/?utm_source=site-share
-
http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/01/google-and-youtube-ban-prof-who-refused-to-use-gender-neutral-pronouns/?utm_source=site-share
They demand that we obey.
-
http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/16/canada-passes-law-criminalizing-use-of-wrong-gender-pronouns/
So if I am in Canada and I call a man who does not want to be a man
it is a hate crime? What kind of crap is this?
-
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/android-users-bombarded-with-4000-spy-apps-three-land-in-google-play/
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmaM-Mar_oA
You have options.
-
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/4295350/did-you-know-google-has-been-secretly-recording-you-heres-how-to-find-the-creepy-audio-files-that-are-monitoring-your-conversations-every-day/
Escape the goolag.
-
" Google secretly recording you? "
This is perfectly ok because Google supports the politics of the LEFT; as does FB. :wink:
-
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/347559-doj-drops-request-for-visitor-ip-addresses-related-to-trump-resistance
-
http://gizmodo.com/facebook-figured-out-my-family-secrets-and-it-wont-tel-1797696163/amp
Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And It Won't Tell Me How
Kashmir Hill
Friday 11:30am
Filed to:CREEPY
Illustration: Jim Cooke/GMG, photo: Getty
Rebecca Porter and I were strangers, as far as I knew. Facebook, however, thought we might be connected. Her name popped up this summer on my list of “People You May Know,” the social network’s roster of potential new online friends for me.
The People You May Know feature is notorious for its uncanny ability to recognize who you associate with in real life. It has mystified and disconcerted Facebook users by showing them an old boss, a one-night-stand, or someone they just ran into on the street.
These friend suggestions go far beyond mundane linking of schoolmates or colleagues. Over the years, I’d been told many weird stories about them, such as when a psychiatrist told me that her patients were being recommended to one another, indirectly outing their medical issues.
What makes the results so unsettling is the range of data sources—location information, activity on other apps, facial recognition on photographs—that Facebook has at its disposal to cross-check its users against one another, in the hopes of keeping them more deeply attached to the site. People generally are aware that Facebook is keeping tabs on who they are and how they use the network, but the depth and persistence of that monitoring is hard to grasp. And People You May Know, or “PYMK” in the company’s internal shorthand, is a black box.
To try to get a look into that black box—and the unknown and apparently aggressive data collection that feeds it—I began downloading and saving the list of people Facebook recommended to me, to see who came up, and what patterns might emerge.
On any given day, it tended to recommend about 160 people, some of them over and over again; over the course of the summer, it suggested more than 1,400 different people to me. About 200, or 15 percent of them, were, in fact, people I knew, but the rest appeared to be strangers.
And then there was Rebecca Porter. She showed up on the list after about a month: an older woman, living in Ohio, with whom I had no Facebook friends in common. I did not recognize her, but her last name was familiar. My biological grandfather is a man I’ve never met, with the last name Porter, who abandoned my father when he was a baby. My father was adopted by a man whose last name was Hill, and he didn’t find out about his biological father until adulthood.
The Porter family lived in Ohio. Growing up half a country away, in Florida, I’d known these blood relatives were out there, but there was no reason to think I would ever meet them.
A few years ago, my father eventually did meet his biological father, along with two uncles and an aunt, when they sought him out during a trip back to Ohio for his mother’s funeral. None of them use Facebook. I asked my dad if he recognized Rebecca Porter. He looked at her profile and said he didn’t think so.
I sent the woman a Facebook message explaining the situation and asking if she was related to my biological grandfather.
“Yes,” she wrote back.
Rebecca Porter, we discovered, is my great aunt, by marriage. She is married to my biological grandfather’s brother; she met him 35 years ago, the year after I was born. Facebook knew my family tree better than I did
“I didn’t know about you,” she told me, when we talked by phone. “I don’t understand how Facebook made the connection.”
It was an enjoyable conversation. After we finished the phone call, I sat still for 15 minutes. I was grateful that Facebook had given me the chance to talk to an unknown relation, but awed and disconcerted by its apparent omniscience.
How Facebook had linked us remained hard to fathom. My father had met her husband in person that one time, after my grandmother’s funeral. They exchanged emails, and my father had his number in his phone. But neither of them uses Facebook. Nor do the other people between me and Rebecca Porter on the family tree.
Facebook is known to buy information from data brokers, and a person who previously worked for the company and who is familiar with how the tool works suggested the familial connection may have been discerned that way. But when asked about that scenario, a Facebook spokesperson said, “Facebook does not use information from data brokers for People You May Know.”
What information had Facebook used, then? The company would not tell me what triggered this recommendation, citing privacy reasons. A Facebook spokesperson said that if the company helped me figure out how it made the connection between me and my great aunt, then every other user who got an unexpected friend suggestion would come around asking for an explanation, too.
It was not a very convincing excuse. Facebook gets people to hand over information about themselves all the time; by what principle would it be unreasonable to sometimes hand some of that information back?
The bigger reason the social network may be shy about revealing how the recommendations work is that many of Facebook’s competitors, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, offer similar features to their users. In a 2010 presentation about PYMK, Facebook’s vice-president of engineering explained its value: “People with more friends use the site more.” There’s a competitive advantage to be gained by being the best at this, meaning Facebook is reluctant to reveal what goes into its algorithm.
The caginess is longstanding. Back in 2009, users getting creepily accurate friend suggestions suspected that Facebook was basing the recommendations on their contact information—which they had volunteered when they first signed up, not realizing Facebook would keep it and use it.
Though Facebook is upfront about its use of contact information now, when asked about it in 2009, the company’s then-chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, wouldn’t confirm what was going on.
“We are constantly iterating on the algorithm that we use to determine the Suggestions section of the home page,” Kelly told Adweek in 2009. “We do not share details about the algorithm itself.”
Not being told exactly how this tool works is frustrating for users, who want to understand the extent of Facebook’s knowledge about them and how deeply the social network peers into their lives. The spokesperson did say that more than 100 signals go into making the friend recommendations and that no one signal alone would trigger a friend suggestion.
One hundred signals! I told the spokesperson that it might be in the search giant’s interest to be more transparent about how this feature works so that users are less creeped out by it. She said Facebook had “in the name of transparency” recently added more information to its help page explaining how People You May Know works, an update noted by USA Today.
That help page offers a brief bulleted list:
People You May Know suggestions come from things like:
• Having friends in common, or mutual friends. This is the most common reason for suggestions
• Being in the same Facebook group or being tagged in the same photo
• Your networks (example: your school, university or work)
• Contacts you’ve uploaded
Depending on how you count them, the listed possibilities are roughly 95 signals shy of adding up to 100 signals. What are all the others?
ADVERTISEMENT
“We’ve chosen to list the most common reasons someone might be suggested as part of People You May Know,” a Facebook spokesperson wrote in an email when asked about the brevity of the list.
Rather than explaining how Facebook connected me to my great aunt, a spokesperson told me via email to delete the suggestion if I don’t like it.
“People don’t always like some of their PYMK suggestions, so one action people can take to control People You May Know is to ‘X’ out suggestions that they are uninterested in,” the spokesperson wrote via email. “This is the best way to tell us that they’re not interested in connecting with someone online and that feedback helps improve our suggestions over time.”
Now, when I look at my friend recommendations, I’m unnerved not just by seeing the names of the people I know offline, but by all the seeming strangers on the list. How many of them are truly strangers, I wonder—and how many are connected to me in ways I’m unaware of. They are not people I know, but are they people I should know?
ADVERTISEMENT
If you’ve had a similar experience with a recommendation, or if you’ve worked on PYMK technology, I could use your help.
This story was produced by Gizmodo Media Group’s Special Projects Desk.
Kashmir Hillkashmir.hill@gizmodomedia.com@kashhill
Kashmir Hill is a senior reporter for the Special Projects Desk, which produces investigative work across all of Gizmodo Media Group's web sites. She writes about privacy and technology.
PGP Fingerprint: AE77 9CA9 59C8 0469 76D5 CC2D 0B3C BD37 D934 E5E9
-
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product
You Are the Product
John Lanchester
BUYThe Attention Merchants: From the Daily Newspaper to Social Media, How Our Time and Attention Is Harvested and Sold by Tim Wu
Atlantic, 416 pp, £20.00, January, ISBN 978 1 78239 482 2
BUYChaos Monkeys: Inside the Silicon Valley Money Machine by Antonio García Martínez
Ebury, 528 pp, £8.99, June, ISBN 978 1 78503 455 8
BUYMove Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon have Cornered Culture and What It Means for All of Us by Jonathan Taplin
Macmillan, 320 pp, £18.99, May, ISBN 978 1 5098 4769 3
At the end of June, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook had hit a new level: two billion monthly active users. That number, the company’s preferred ‘metric’ when measuring its own size, means two billion different people used Facebook in the preceding month. It is hard to grasp just how extraordinary that is. Bear in mind that thefacebook – its original name – was launched exclusively for Harvard students in 2004. No human enterprise, no new technology or utility or service, has ever been adopted so widely so quickly. The speed of uptake far exceeds that of the internet itself, let alone ancient technologies such as television or cinema or radio.
Also amazing: as Facebook has grown, its users’ reliance on it has also grown. The increase in numbers is not, as one might expect, accompanied by a lower level of engagement. More does not mean worse – or worse, at least, from Facebook’s point of view. On the contrary. In the far distant days of October 2012, when Facebook hit one billion users, 55 per cent of them were using it every day. At two billion, 66 per cent are. Its user base is growing at 18 per cent a year – which you’d have thought impossible for a business already so enormous. Facebook’s biggest rival for logged-in users is YouTube, owned by its deadly rival Alphabet (the company formerly known as Google), in second place with 1.5 billion monthly users. Three of the next four biggest apps, or services, or whatever one wants to call them, are WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, with 1.2 billion, 1.2 billion, and 700 million users respectively (the Chinese app WeChat is the other one, with 889 million). Those three entities have something in common: they are all owned by Facebook. No wonder the company is the fifth most valuable in the world, with a market capitalisation of $445 billion.
Zuckerberg’s news about Facebook’s size came with an announcement which may or may not prove to be significant. He said that the company was changing its ‘mission statement’, its version of the canting pieties beloved of corporate America. Facebook’s mission used to be ‘making the world more open and connected’. A non-Facebooker reading that is likely to ask: why? Connection is presented as an end in itself, an inherently and automatically good thing. Is it, though? Flaubert was sceptical about trains because he thought (in Julian Barnes’s paraphrase) that ‘the railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid.’ You don’t have to be as misanthropic as Flaubert to wonder if something similar isn’t true about connecting people on Facebook. For instance, Facebook is generally agreed to have played a big, perhaps even a crucial, role in the election of Donald Trump. The benefit to humanity is not clear. This thought, or something like it, seems to have occurred to Zuckerberg, because the new mission statement spells out a reason for all this connectedness. It says that the new mission is to ‘give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together’.
Hmm. Alphabet’s mission statement, ‘to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’, came accompanied by the maxim ‘Don’t be evil,’ which has been the source of a lot of ridicule: Steve Jobs called it ‘bullshit’.1 Which it is, but it isn’t only bullshit. Plenty of companies, indeed entire industries, base their business model on being evil. The insurance business, for instance, depends on the fact that insurers charge customers more than their insurance is worth; that’s fair enough, since if they didn’t do that they wouldn’t be viable as businesses. What isn’t fair is the panoply of cynical techniques that many insurers use to avoid, as far as possible, paying out when the insured-against event happens. Just ask anyone who has had a property suffer a major mishap. It’s worth saying ‘Don’t be evil,’ because lots of businesses are. This is especially an issue in the world of the internet. Internet companies are working in a field that is poorly understood (if understood at all) by customers and regulators. The stuff they’re doing, if they’re any good at all, is by definition new. In that overlapping area of novelty and ignorance and unregulation, it’s well worth reminding employees not to be evil, because if the company succeeds and grows, plenty of chances to be evil are going to come along.
Google and Facebook have both been walking this line from the beginning. Their styles of doing so are different. An internet entrepreneur I know has had dealings with both companies. ‘YouTube knows they have lots of dirty things going on and are keen to try and do some good to alleviate it,’ he told me. I asked what he meant by ‘dirty’. ‘Terrorist and extremist content, stolen content, copyright violations. That kind of thing. But Google in my experience knows that there are ambiguities, moral doubts, around some of what they do, and at least they try to think about it. Facebook just doesn’t care. When you’re in a room with them you can tell. They’re’ – he took a moment to find the right word – ‘scuzzy’.
That might sound harsh. There have, however, been ethical problems and ambiguities about Facebook since the moment of its creation, a fact we know because its creator was live-blogging at the time. The scene is as it was recounted in Aaron Sorkin’s movie about the birth of Facebook, The Social Network. While in his first year at Harvard, Zuckerberg suffered a romantic rebuff. Who wouldn’t respond to this by creating a website where undergraduates’ pictures are placed side by side so that users of the site can vote for the one they find more attractive? (The film makes it look as if it was only female undergraduates: in real life it was both.) The site was called Facemash. In the great man’s own words, at the time:
I’m a little intoxicated, I’m not gonna lie. So what if it’s not even 10 p.m. and it’s a Tuesday night? What? The Kirkland dormitory facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals and have people vote on which is the more attractive … Let the hacking begin.
As Tim Wu explains in his energetic and original new book The Attention Merchants, a ‘facebook’ in the sense Zuckerberg uses it here ‘traditionally referred to a physical booklet produced at American universities to promote socialisation in the way that “Hi, My Name Is” stickers do at events; the pages consisted of rows upon rows of head shots with the corresponding name’. Harvard was already working on an electronic version of its various dormitory facebooks. The leading social network, Friendster, already had three million users. The idea of putting these two things together was not entirely novel, but as Zuckerberg said at the time, ‘I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.’
Wu argues that capturing and reselling attention has been the basic model for a large number of modern businesses, from posters in late 19th-century Paris, through the invention of mass-market newspapers that made their money not through circulation but through ad sales, to the modern industries of advertising and ad-funded TV. Facebook is in a long line of such enterprises, though it might be the purest ever example of a company whose business is the capture and sale of attention. Very little new thinking was involved in its creation. As Wu observes, Facebook is ‘a business with an exceedingly low ratio of invention to success’. What Zuckerberg had instead of originality was the ability to get things done and to see the big issues clearly. The crucial thing with internet start-ups is the ability to execute plans and to adapt to changing circumstances. It’s Zuck’s skill at doing that – at hiring talented engineers, and at navigating the big-picture trends in his industry – that has taken his company to where it is today. Those two huge sister companies under Facebook’s giant wing, Instagram and WhatsApp, were bought for $1 billion and $19 billion respectively, at a point when they had no revenue. No banker or analyst or sage could have told Zuckerberg what those acquisitions were worth; nobody knew better than he did. He could see where things were going and help make them go there. That talent turned out to be worth several hundred billion dollars.
Jesse Eisenberg’s brilliant portrait of Zuckerberg in The Social Network is misleading, as Antonio García Martínez, a former Facebook manager, argues in Chaos Monkeys, his entertainingly caustic book about his time at the company. The movie Zuckerberg is a highly credible character, a computer genius located somewhere on the autistic spectrum with minimal to non-existent social skills. But that’s not what the man is really like. In real life, Zuckerberg was studying for a degree with a double concentration in computer science and – this is the part people tend to forget – psychology. People on the spectrum have a limited sense of how other people’s minds work; autists, it has been said, lack a ‘theory of mind’. Zuckerberg, not so much. He is very well aware of how people’s minds work and in particular of the social dynamics of popularity and status. The initial launch of Facebook was limited to people with a Harvard email address; the intention was to make access to the site seem exclusive and aspirational. (And also to control site traffic so that the servers never went down. Psychology and computer science, hand in hand.) Then it was extended to other elite campuses in the US. When it launched in the UK, it was limited to Oxbridge and the LSE. The idea was that people wanted to look at what other people like them were doing, to see their social networks, to compare, to boast and show off, to give full rein to every moment of longing and envy, to keep their noses pressed against the sweet-shop window of others’ lives.
Change your perspective - subscribe now
This focus attracted the attention of Facebook’s first external investor, the now notorious Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. Again, The Social Network gets it right: Thiel’s $500,000 investment in 2004 was crucial to the success of the company. But there was a particular reason Facebook caught Thiel’s eye, rooted in a byway of intellectual history. In the course of his studies at Stanford – he majored in philosophy – Thiel became interested in the ideas of the US-based French philosopher René Girard, as advocated in his most influential book, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World. Girard’s big idea was something he called ‘mimetic desire’. Human beings are born with a need for food and shelter. Once these fundamental necessities of life have been acquired, we look around us at what other people are doing, and wanting, and we copy them. In Thiel’s summary, the idea is ‘that imitation is at the root of all behaviour’.
Girard was a Christian, and his view of human nature is that it is fallen. We don’t know what we want or who we are; we don’t really have values and beliefs of our own; what we have instead is an instinct to copy and compare. We are homo mimeticus. ‘Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and who turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.’ Look around, ye petty, and compare. The reason Thiel latched onto Facebook with such alacrity was that he saw in it for the first time a business that was Girardian to its core: built on people’s deep need to copy. ‘Facebook first spread by word of mouth, and it’s about word of mouth, so it’s doubly mimetic,’ Thiel said. ‘Social media proved to be more important than it looked, because it’s about our natures.’ We are keen to be seen as we want to be seen, and Facebook is the most popular tool humanity has ever had with which to do that.
*
The view of human nature implied by these ideas is pretty dark. If all people want to do is go and look at other people so that they can compare themselves to them and copy what they want – if that is the final, deepest truth about humanity and its motivations – then Facebook doesn’t really have to take too much trouble over humanity’s welfare, since all the bad things that happen to us are things we are doing to ourselves. For all the corporate uplift of its mission statement, Facebook is a company whose essential premise is misanthropic. It is perhaps for that reason that Facebook, more than any other company of its size, has a thread of malignity running through its story. The high-profile, tabloid version of this has come in the form of incidents such as the live-streaming of rapes, suicides, murders and cop-killings. But this is one of the areas where Facebook seems to me relatively blameless. People live-stream these terrible things over the site because it has the biggest audience; if Snapchat or Periscope were bigger, they’d be doing it there instead.
In many other areas, however, the site is far from blameless. The highest-profile recent criticisms of the company stem from its role in Trump’s election. There are two components to this, one of them implicit in the nature of the site, which has an inherent tendency to fragment and atomise its users into like-minded groups. The mission to ‘connect’ turns out to mean, in practice, connect with people who agree with you. We can’t prove just how dangerous these ‘filter bubbles’ are to our societies, but it seems clear that they are having a severe impact on our increasingly fragmented polity. Our conception of ‘we’ is becoming narrower.
This fragmentation created the conditions for the second strand of Facebook’s culpability in the Anglo-American political disasters of the last year. The portmanteau terms for these developments are ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’, and they were made possible by the retreat from a general agora of public debate into separate ideological bunkers. In the open air, fake news can be debated and exposed; on Facebook, if you aren’t a member of the community being served the lies, you’re quite likely never to know that they are in circulation. It’s crucial to this that Facebook has no financial interest in telling the truth. No company better exemplifies the internet-age dictum that if the product is free, you are the product. Facebook’s customers aren’t the people who are on the site: its customers are the advertisers who use its network and who relish its ability to direct ads to receptive audiences. Why would Facebook care if the news streaming over the site is fake? Its interest is in the targeting, not in the content. This is probably one reason for the change in the company’s mission statement. If your only interest is in connecting people, why would you care about falsehoods? They might even be better than the truth, since they are quicker to identify the like-minded. The newfound ambition to ‘build communities’ makes it seem as if the company is taking more of an interest in the consequence of the connections it fosters.
Fake news is not, as Facebook has acknowledged, the only way it was used to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. On 6 January 2017 the director of national intelligence published a report saying that the Russians had waged an internet disinformation campaign to damage Hillary Clinton and help Trump. ‘Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations – such as cyber-activity – with overt efforts by Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls”,’ the report said. At the end of April, Facebook got around to admitting this (by then) fairly obvious truth, in an interesting paper published by its internal security division. ‘Fake news’, they argue, is an unhelpful, catch-all term because misinformation is in fact spread in a variety of ways:
Information (or Influence) Operations – Actions taken by governments or organised non-state actors to distort domestic or foreign political sentiment.
False News – News articles that purport to be factual, but which contain intentional misstatements of fact with the intention to arouse passions, attract viewership, or deceive.
False Amplifiers – Co-ordinated activity by inauthentic accounts with the intent of manipulating political discussion (e.g. by discouraging specific parties from participating in discussion, or amplifying sensationalistic voices over others).
Disinformation – Inaccurate or manipulated information/content that is spread intentionally. This can include false news, or it can involve more subtle methods, such as false flag operations, feeding inaccurate quotes or stories to innocent intermediaries, or knowingly amplifying biased or misleading information.
The company is promising to treat this problem or set of problems as seriously as it treats such other problems as malware, account hacking and spam. We’ll see. One man’s fake news is another’s truth-telling, and Facebook works hard at avoiding responsibility for the content on its site – except for sexual content, about which it is super-stringent. Nary a nipple on show. It’s a bizarre set of priorities, which only makes sense in an American context, where any whiff of explicit sexuality would immediately give the site a reputation for unwholesomeness. Photos of breastfeeding women are banned and rapidly get taken down. Lies and propaganda are fine.
The key to understanding this is to think about what advertisers want: they don’t want to appear next to pictures of breasts because it might damage their brands, but they don’t mind appearing alongside lies because the lies might be helping them find the consumers they’re trying to target. In Move Fast and Break Things, his polemic against the ‘digital-age robber barons’, Jonathan Taplin points to an analysis on Buzzfeed: ‘In the final three months of the US presidential campaign, the top-performing fake election news stories on Facebook generated more engagement than the top stories from major news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC News and others.’ This doesn’t sound like a problem Facebook will be in any hurry to fix.
The fact is that fraudulent content, and stolen content, are rife on Facebook, and the company doesn’t really mind, because it isn’t in its interest to mind. Much of the video content on the site is stolen from the people who created it. An illuminating YouTube video from Kurzgesagt, a German outfit that makes high-quality short explanatory films, notes that in 2015, 725 of Facebook’s top one thousand most viewed videos were stolen. This is another area where Facebook’s interests contradict society’s. We may collectively have an interest in sustaining creative and imaginative work in many different forms and on many platforms. Facebook doesn’t. It has two priorities, as Martínez explains in Chaos Monkeys: growth and monetisation. It simply doesn’t care where the content comes from. It is only now starting to care about the perception that much of the content is fraudulent, because if that perception were to become general, it might affect the amount of trust and therefore the amount of time people give to the site.
Zuckerberg himself has spoken up on this issue, in a Facebook post addressing the question of ‘Facebook and the election’. After a certain amount of boilerplate bullshit (‘Our goal is to give every person a voice. We believe deeply in people’), he gets to the nub of it. ‘Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 per cent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes.’ More than one Facebook user pointed out that in their own news feed, Zuckerberg’s post about authenticity ran next to fake news. In one case, the fake story pretended to be from the TV sports channel ESPN. When it was clicked on, it took users to an ad selling a diet supplement. As the writer Doc Searls pointed out, it’s a double fraud, ‘outright lies from a forged source’, which is quite something to have right slap next to the head of Facebook boasting about the absence of fraud. Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter and founder of the long-read specialist Medium, found the same post by Zuckerberg next to a different fake ESPN story and another piece of fake news purporting to be from CNN, announcing that Congress had disqualified Trump from office. When clicked-through, that turned out to be from a company offering a 12-week programme to strengthen toes. (That’s right: strengthen toes.) Still, we now know that Zuck believes in people. That’s the main thing.
*
A neutral observer might wonder if Facebook’s attitude to content creators is sustainable. Facebook needs content, obviously, because that’s what the site consists of: content that other people have created. It’s just that it isn’t too keen on anyone apart from Facebook making any money from that content. Over time, that attitude is profoundly destructive to the creative and media industries. Access to an audience – that unprecedented two billion people – is a wonderful thing, but Facebook isn’t in any hurry to help you make money from it. If the content providers all eventually go broke, well, that might not be too much of a problem. There are, for now, lots of willing providers: anyone on Facebook is in a sense working for Facebook, adding value to the company. In 2014, the New York Times did the arithmetic and found that humanity was spending 39,757 collective years on the site, every single day. Jonathan Taplin points out that this is ‘almost fifteen million years of free labour per year’. That was back when it had a mere 1.23 billion users.
Taplin has worked in academia and in the film industry. The reason he feels so strongly about these questions is that he started out in the music business, as manager of The Band, and was on hand to watch the business being destroyed by the internet. What had been a $20 billion industry in 1999 was a $7 billion industry 15 years later. He saw musicians who had made a good living become destitute. That didn’t happen because people had stopped listening to their music – more people than ever were listening to it – but because music had become something people expected to be free. YouTube is the biggest source of music in the world, playing billions of tracks annually, but in 2015 musicians earned less from it and from its ad-supported rivals than they earned from sales of vinyl. Not CDs and recordings in general: vinyl.
Something similar has happened in the world of journalism. Facebook is in essence an advertising company which is indifferent to the content on its site except insofar as it helps to target and sell advertisements. A version of Gresham’s law is at work, in which fake news, which gets more clicks and is free to produce, drives out real news, which often tells people things they don’t want to hear, and is expensive to produce. In addition, Facebook uses an extensive set of tricks to increase its traffic and the revenue it makes from targeting ads, at the expense of the news-making institutions whose content it hosts. Its news feed directs traffic at you based not on your interests, but on how to make the maximum amount of advertising revenue from you. In September 2016, Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of the Guardian, told a Financial Times conference that Facebook had ‘sucked up $27 million’ of the newspaper’s projected ad revenue that year. ‘They are taking all the money because they have algorithms we don’t understand, which are a filter between what we do and how people receive it.’
Change your perspective - subscribe now
This goes to the heart of the question of what Facebook is and what it does. For all the talk about connecting people, building community, and believing in people, Facebook is an advertising company. Martínez gives the clearest account both of how it ended up like that, and how Facebook advertising works. In the early years of Facebook, Zuckerberg was much more interested in the growth side of the company than in the monetisation. That changed when Facebook went in search of its big payday at the initial public offering, the shining day when shares in a business first go on sale to the general public. This is a huge turning-point for any start-up: in the case of many tech industry workers, the hope and expectation associated with ‘going public’ is what attracted them to their firm in the first place, and/or what has kept them glued to their workstations. It’s the point where the notional money of an early-days business turns into the real cash of a public company.
Martínez was there at the very moment when Zuck got everyone together to tell them they were going public, the moment when all Facebook employees knew that they were about to become rich:
I had chosen a seat behind a detached pair, who on further inspection turned out to be Chris Cox, head of FB product, and Naomi Gleit, a Harvard grad who joined as employee number 29, and was now reputed to be the current longest-serving employee other than Mark.
Naomi, between chats with Cox, was clicking away on her laptop, paying little attention to the Zuckian harangue. I peered over her shoulder at her screen. She was scrolling down an email with a number of links, and progressively clicking each one into existence as another tab on her browser. Clickathon finished, she began lingering on each with an appraiser’s eye. They were real estate listings, each for a different San Francisco property.
Martínez took note of one of the properties and looked it up later. Price: $2.4 million. He is fascinating, and fascinatingly bitter, on the subject of class and status differences in Silicon Valley, in particular the never publicly discussed issue of the huge gulf between early employees in a company, who have often been made unfathomably rich, and the wage slaves who join the firm later in its story. ‘The protocol is not to talk about it at all publicly.’ But, as Bonnie Brown, a masseuse at Google in the early days, wrote in her memoir, ‘a sharp contrast developed between Googlers working side by side. While one was looking at local movie times on their monitor, the other was booking a flight to Belize for the weekend. How was the conversation on Monday morning going to sound now?’
When the time came for the IPO, Facebook needed to turn from a company with amazing growth to one that was making amazing money. It was already making some, thanks to its sheer size – as Martínez observes, ‘a billion times any number is still a big fucking number’ – but not enough to guarantee a truly spectacular valuation on launch. It was at this stage that the question of how to monetise Facebook got Zuckerberg’s full attention. It’s interesting, and to his credit, that he hadn’t put too much focus on it before – perhaps because he isn’t particularly interested in money per se. But he does like to win.
The solution was to take the huge amount of information Facebook has about its ‘community’ and use it to let advertisers target ads with a specificity never known before, in any medium. Martínez: ‘It can be demographic in nature (e.g. 30-to-40-year-old females), geographic (people within five miles of Sarasota, Florida), or even based on Facebook profile data (do you have children; i.e. are you in the mommy segment?).’ Taplin makes the same point:
If I want to reach women between the ages of 25 and 30 in zip code 37206 who like country music and drink bourbon, Facebook can do that. Moreover, Facebook can often get friends of these women to post a ‘sponsored story’ on a targeted consumer’s news feed, so it doesn’t feel like an ad. As Zuckerberg said when he introduced Facebook Ads, ‘Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.’
That was the first part of the monetisation process for Facebook, when it turned its gigantic scale into a machine for making money. The company offered advertisers an unprecedentedly precise tool for targeting their ads at particular consumers. (Particular segments of voters too can be targeted with complete precision. One instance from 2016 was an anti-Clinton ad repeating a notorious speech she made in 1996 on the subject of ‘super-predators’. The ad was sent to African-American voters in areas where the Republicans were trying, successfully as it turned out, to suppress the Democrat vote. Nobody else saw the ads.)
The second big shift around monetisation came in 2012 when internet traffic began to switch away from desktop computers towards mobile devices. If you do most of your online reading on a desktop, you are in a minority. The switch was a potential disaster for all businesses which relied on internet advertising, because people don’t much like mobile ads, and were far less likely to click on them than on desktop ads. In other words, although general internet traffic was increasing rapidly, because the growth was coming from mobile, the traffic was becoming proportionately less valuable. If the trend were to continue, every internet business that depended on people clicking links – i.e. pretty much all of them, but especially the giants like Google and Facebook – would be worth much less money.
Facebook solved the problem by means of a technique called ‘onboarding’. As Martínez explains it, the best way to think about this is to consider our various kinds of name and address.
For example, if Bed, Bath and Beyond wants to get my attention with one of its wonderful 20 per cent off coupons, it calls out:
Antonio García Martínez
1 Clarence Place #13
San Francisco, CA 94107
If it wants to reach me on my mobile device, my name there is:
38400000-8cfo-11bd-b23e-10b96e40000d
That’s my quasi-immutable device ID, broadcast hundreds of times a day on mobile ad exchanges.
On my laptop, my name is this:
07J6yJPMB9juTowar.AWXGQnGPA1MCmThgb9wN4vLoUpg.BUUtWg.rg.FTN.0.AWUxZtUf
This is the content of the Facebook re-targeting cookie, which is used to target ads-are-you based on your mobile browsing.
Though it may not be obvious, each of these keys is associated with a wealth of our personal behaviour data: every website we’ve been to, many things we’ve bought in physical stores, and every app we’ve used and what we did there … The biggest thing going on in marketing right now, what is generating tens of billions of dollars in investment and endless scheming inside the bowels of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple, is how to tie these different sets of names together, and who controls the links. That’s it.
Facebook already had a huge amount of information about people and their social networks and their professed likes and dislikes.2 After waking up to the importance of monetisation, they added to their own data a huge new store of data about offline, real-world behaviour, acquired through partnerships with big companies such as Experian, which have been monitoring consumer purchases for decades via their relationships with direct marketing firms, credit card companies, and retailers. There doesn’t seem to be a one-word description of these firms: ‘consumer credit agencies’ or something similar about sums it up. Their reach is much broader than that makes it sound, though.3 Experian says its data is based on more than 850 million records and claims to have information on 49.7 million UK adults living in 25.2 million households in 1.73 million postcodes. These firms know all there is to know about your name and address, your income and level of education, your relationship status, plus everywhere you’ve ever paid for anything with a card. Facebook could now put your identity together with the unique device identifier on your phone.
That was crucial to Facebook’s new profitability. On mobiles, people tend to prefer the internet to apps, which corral the information they gather and don’t share it with other companies. A game app on your phone is unlikely to know anything about you except the level you’ve got to on that particular game. But because everyone in the world is on Facebook, the company knows everyone’s phone identifier. It was now able to set up an ad server delivering far better targeted mobile ads than anyone else could manage, and it did so in a more elegant and well-integrated form than anyone else had managed.
So Facebook knows your phone ID and can add it to your Facebook ID. It puts that together with the rest of your online activity: not just every site you’ve ever visited, but every click you’ve ever made – the Facebook button tracks every Facebook user, whether they click on it or not. Since the Facebook button is pretty much ubiquitous on the net, this means that Facebook sees you, everywhere. Now, thanks to its partnerships with the old-school credit firms, Facebook knew who everybody was, where they lived, and everything they’d ever bought with plastic in a real-world offline shop.4 All this information is used for a purpose which is, in the final analysis, profoundly bathetic. It is to sell you things via online ads.
The ads work on two models. In one of them, advertisers ask Facebook to target consumers from a particular demographic – our thirty-something bourbon-drinking country music fan, or our African American in Philadelphia who was lukewarm about Hillary. But Facebook also delivers ads via a process of online auctions, which happen in real time whenever you click on a website. Because every website you’ve ever visited (more or less) has planted a cookie on your web browser, when you go to a new site, there is a real-time auction, in millionths of a second, to decide what your eyeballs are worth and what ads should be served to them, based on what your interests, and income level and whatnot, are known to be. This is the reason ads have that disconcerting tendency to follow you around, so that you look at a new telly or a pair of shoes or a holiday destination, and they’re still turning up on every site you visit weeks later. This was how, by chucking talent and resources at the problem, Facebook was able to turn mobile from a potential revenue disaster to a great hot steamy geyser of profit.
What this means is that even more than it is in the advertising business, Facebook is in the surveillance business. Facebook, in fact, is the biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the history of mankind. It knows far, far more about you than the most intrusive government has ever known about its citizens. It’s amazing that people haven’t really understood this about the company. I’ve spent time thinking about Facebook, and the thing I keep coming back to is that its users don’t realise what it is the company does. What Facebook does is watch you, and then use what it knows about you and your behaviour to sell ads. I’m not sure there has ever been a more complete disconnect between what a company says it does – ‘connect’, ‘build communities’ – and the commercial reality. Note that the company’s knowledge about its users isn’t used merely to target ads but to shape the flow of news to them. Since there is so much content posted on the site, the algorithms used to filter and direct that content are the thing that determines what you see: people think their news feed is largely to do with their friends and interests, and it sort of is, with the crucial proviso that it is their friends and interests as mediated by the commercial interests of Facebook. Your eyes are directed towards the place where they are most valuable for Facebook.
*
I’m left wondering what will happen when and if this $450 billion penny drops. Wu’s history of attention merchants shows that there is a suggestive pattern here: that a boom is more often than not followed by a backlash, that a period of explosive growth triggers a public and sometimes legislative reaction. Wu’s first example is the draconian anti-poster laws introduced in early 20th-century Paris (and still in force – one reason the city is by contemporary standards undisfigured by ads). As Wu says, ‘when the commodity in question is access to people’s minds, the perpetual quest for growth ensures that forms of backlash, both major and minor, are all but inevitable.’ Wu calls a minor form of this phenomenon the ‘disenchantment effect’.
Facebook seems vulnerable to these disenchantment effects. One place they are likely to begin is in the core area of its business model – ad-selling. The advertising it sells is ‘programmatic’, i.e. determined by computer algorithms that match the customer to the advertiser and deliver ads accordingly, via targeting and/or online auctions. The problem with this from the customer’s point of view – remember, the customer here is the advertiser, not the Facebook user – is that a lot of the clicks on these ads are fake. There is a mismatch of interests here. Facebook wants clicks, because that’s how it gets paid: when ads are clicked on. But what if the clicks aren’t real but are instead automated clicks from fake accounts run by computer bots? This is a well-known problem, which particularly affects Google, because it’s easy to set up a site, allow it to host programmatic ads, then set up a bot to click on those ads, and collect the money that comes rolling in. On Facebook the fraudulent clicks are more likely to be from competitors trying to drive each others’ costs up.
The industry publication Ad Week estimates the annual cost of click fraud at $7 billion, about a sixth of the entire market. One single fraud site, Methbot, whose existence was exposed at the end of last year, uses a network of hacked computers to generate between three and five million dollars’ worth of fraudulent clicks every day. Estimates of fraudulent traffic’s market share are variable, with some guesses coming in at around 50 per cent; some website owners say their own data indicates a fraudulent-click rate of 90 per cent. This is by no means entirely Facebook’s problem, but it isn’t hard to imagine how it could lead to a big revolt against ‘ad tech’, as this technology is generally known, on the part of the companies who are paying for it. I’ve heard academics in the field say that there is a form of corporate groupthink in the world of the big buyers of advertising, who are currently responsible for directing large parts of their budgets towards Facebook. That mindset could change. Also, many of Facebook’s metrics are tilted to catch the light at the angle which makes them look shiniest. A video is counted as ‘viewed’ on Facebook if it runs for three seconds, even if the user is scrolling past it in her news feed and even if the sound is off. Many Facebook videos with hundreds of thousands of ‘views’, if counted by the techniques that are used to count television audiences, would have no viewers at all.
A customers’ revolt could overlap with a backlash from regulators and governments. Google and Facebook have what amounts to a monopoly on digital advertising. That monopoly power is becoming more and more important as advertising spend migrates online. Between them, they have already destroyed large sections of the newspaper industry. Facebook has done a huge amount to lower the quality of public debate and to ensure that it is easier than ever before to tell what Hitler approvingly called ‘big lies’ and broadcast them to a big audience. The company has no business need to care about that, but it is the kind of issue that could attract the attention of regulators.
That isn’t the only external threat to the Google/Facebook duopoly. The US attitude to anti-trust law was shaped by Robert Bork, the judge whom Reagan nominated for the Supreme Court but the Senate failed to confirm. Bork’s most influential legal stance came in the area of competition law. He promulgated the doctrine that the only form of anti-competitive action which matters concerns the prices paid by consumers. His idea was that if the price is falling that means the market is working, and no questions of monopoly need be addressed. This philosophy still shapes regulatory attitudes in the US and it’s the reason Amazon, for instance, has been left alone by regulators despite the manifestly monopolistic position it holds in the world of online retail, books especially.
The big internet enterprises seem invulnerable on these narrow grounds. Or they do until you consider the question of individualised pricing. The huge data trail we all leave behind as we move around the internet is increasingly used to target us with prices which aren’t like the tags attached to goods in a shop. On the contrary, they are dynamic, moving with our perceived ability to pay.5 Four researchers based in Spain studied the phenomenon by creating automated personas to behave as if, in one case, ‘budget conscious’ and in another ‘affluent’, and then checking to see if their different behaviour led to different prices. It did: a search for headphones returned a set of results which were on average four times more expensive for the affluent persona. An airline-ticket discount site charged higher fares to the affluent consumer. In general, the location of the searcher caused prices to vary by as much as 166 per cent. So in short, yes, personalised prices are a thing, and the ability to create them depends on tracking us across the internet. That seems to me a prima facie violation of the American post-Bork monopoly laws, focused as they are entirely on price. It’s sort of funny, and also sort of grotesque, that an unprecedentedly huge apparatus of consumer surveillance is fine, apparently, but an unprecedentedly huge apparatus of consumer surveillance which results in some people paying higher prices may well be illegal.
Perhaps the biggest potential threat to Facebook is that its users might go off it. Two billion monthly active users is a lot of people, and the ‘network effects’ – the scale of the connectivity – are, obviously, extraordinary. But there are other internet companies which connect people on the same scale – Snapchat has 166 million daily users, Twitter 328 million monthly users – and as we’ve seen in the disappearance of Myspace, the onetime leader in social media, when people change their minds about a service, they can go off it hard and fast.
For that reason, were it to be generally understood that Facebook’s business model is based on surveillance, the company would be in danger. The one time Facebook did poll its users about the surveillance model was in 2011, when it proposed a change to its terms and conditions – the change that underpins the current template for its use of data. The result of the poll was clear: 90 per cent of the vote was against the changes. Facebook went ahead and made them anyway, on the grounds that so few people had voted. No surprise there, neither in the users’ distaste for surveillance nor in the company’s indifference to that distaste. But this is something which could change.
The other thing that could happen at the level of individual users is that people stop using Facebook because it makes them unhappy. This isn’t the same issue as the scandal in 2014 when it turned out that social scientists at the company had deliberately manipulated some people’s news feeds to see what effect, if any, it had on their emotions. The resulting paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was a study of ‘social contagion’, or the transfer of emotion among groups of people, as a result of a change in the nature of the stories seen by 689,003 users of Facebook. ‘When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks.’ The scientists seem not to have considered how this information would be received, and the story played quite big for a while.
Perhaps the fact that people already knew this story accidentally deflected attention from what should have been a bigger scandal, exposed earlier this year in a paper from the American Journal of Epidemiology. The paper was titled ‘Association of Facebook Use with Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study’. The researchers found quite simply that the more people use Facebook, the more unhappy they are. A 1 per cent increase in ‘likes’ and clicks and status updates was correlated with a 5 to 8 per cent decrease in mental health. In addition, they found that the positive effect of real-world interactions, which enhance well-being, was accurately paralleled by the ‘negative associations of Facebook use’. In effect people were swapping real relationships which made them feel good for time on Facebook which made them feel bad. That’s my gloss rather than that of the scientists, who take the trouble to make it clear that this is a correlation rather than a definite causal relationship, but they did go so far – unusually far – as to say that the data ‘suggests a possible trade-off between offline and online relationships’. This isn’t the first time something like this effect has been found. To sum up: there is a lot of research showing that Facebook makes people feel like shit. So maybe, one day, people will stop using it.6
*
What, though, if none of the above happens? What if advertisers don’t rebel, governments don’t act, users don’t quit, and the good ship Zuckerberg and all who sail in her continues blithely on? We should look again at that figure of two billion monthly active users. The total number of people who have any access to the internet – as broadly defined as possible, to include the slowest dial-up speeds and creakiest developing-world mobile service, as well as people who have access but don’t use it – is three and a half billion. Of those, about 750 million are in China and Iran, which block Facebook. Russians, about a hundred million of whom are on the net, tend not to use Facebook because they prefer their native copycat site VKontakte. So put the potential audience for the site at 2.6 billion. In developed countries where Facebook has been present for years, use of the site peaks at about 75 per cent of the population (that’s in the US). That would imply a total potential audience for Facebook of 1.95 billion. At two billion monthly active users, Facebook has already gone past that number, and is running out of connected humans. Martínez compares Zuckerberg to Alexander the Great, weeping because he has no more worlds to conquer. Perhaps this is one reason for the early signals Zuck has sent about running for president – the fifty-state pretending-to-give-a-shit tour, the thoughtful-listening pose he’s photographed in while sharing milkshakes in (Presidential Ambitions klaxon!) an Iowa diner.
Whatever comes next will take us back to those two pillars of the company, growth and monetisation. Growth can only come from connecting new areas of the planet. An early experiment came in the form of Free Basics, a program offering internet connectivity to remote villages in India, with the proviso that the range of sites on offer should be controlled by Facebook. ‘Who could possibly be against this?’ Zuckerberg wrote in the Times of India. The answer: lots and lots of angry Indians. The government ruled that Facebook shouldn’t be able to ‘shape users’ internet experience’ by restricting access to the broader internet. A Facebook board member tweeted that ‘anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?’ As Taplin points out, that remark ‘unwittingly revealed a previously unspoken truth: Facebook and Google are the new colonial powers.’
So the growth side of the equation is not without its challenges, technological as well as political. Google (which has a similar running-out-of-humans problem) is working on ‘Project Loon’, ‘a network of balloons travelling on the edge of space, designed to extend internet connectivity to people in rural and remote areas worldwide’. Facebook is working on a project involving a solar-powered drone called the Aquila, which has the wingspan of a commercial airliner, weighs less than a car, and when cruising uses less energy than a microwave oven. The idea is that it will circle remote, currently unconnected areas of the planet, for flights that last as long as three months at a time. It connects users via laser and was developed in Bridgwater, Somerset. (Amazon’s drone programme is based in the UK too, near Cambridge. Our legal regime is pro-drone.) Even the most hardened Facebook sceptic has to be a little bit impressed by the ambition and energy. But the fact remains that the next two billion users are going to be hard to find.
That’s growth, which will mainly happen in the developing world. Here in the rich world, the focus is more on monetisation, and it’s in this area that I have to admit something which is probably already apparent. I am scared of Facebook. The company’s ambition, its ruthlessness, and its lack of a moral compass scare me. It goes back to that moment of its creation, Zuckerberg at his keyboard after a few drinks creating a website to compare people’s appearance, not for any real reason other than that he was able to do it. That’s the crucial thing about Facebook, the main thing which isn’t understood about its motivation: it does things because it can. Zuckerberg knows how to do something, and other people don’t, so he does it. Motivation of that type doesn’t work in the Hollywood version of life, so Aaron Sorkin had to give Zuck a motive to do with social aspiration and rejection. But that’s wrong, completely wrong. He isn’t motivated by that kind of garden-variety psychology. He does this because he can, and justifications about ‘connection’ and ‘community’ are ex post facto rationalisations. The drive is simpler and more basic. That’s why the impulse to growth has been so fundamental to the company, which is in many respects more like a virus than it is like a business. Grow and multiply and monetise. Why? There is no why. Because.
Automation and artificial intelligence are going to have a big impact in all kinds of worlds. These technologies are new and real and they are coming soon. Facebook is deeply interested in these trends. We don’t know where this is going, we don’t know what the social costs and consequences will be, we don’t know what will be the next area of life to be hollowed out, the next business model to be destroyed, the next company to go the way of Polaroid or the next business to go the way of journalism or the next set of tools and techniques to become available to the people who used Facebook to manipulate the elections of 2016. We just don’t know what’s next, but we know it’s likely to be consequential, and that a big part will be played by the world’s biggest social network. On the evidence of Facebook’s actions so far, it’s impossible to face this prospect without unease.
-
https://protonmail.com/blog/yahoo-us-intelligence/
What Yahoo’s NSA Surveillance Means for Email Privacy
Posted on October 6, 2016 by Andy Yen
Updated October 7, 2016 with additional clarification and analysis of Yahoo’s denial
Dear ProtonMail Community,
Two weeks ago, we published a security advisory regarding the mass hacking of Yahoo. Unfortunately, due to recent events, we are issuing a second advisory regarding all US email providers.
What happened?
This week, it was revealed that as a result of a secret US government directive, Yahoo was forced to implement special surveillance software to scan all Yahoo Mail accounts at the request of the NSA and FBI. Sometime in early 2015, Yahoo secretly modified their spam and malware filters to scan all incoming email messages for the phrases in the court order and then siphoned those messages off to US intelligence. This is significant for several reasons:
This is the first known incident where a US intelligence directive has indiscriminately targeted all accounts as opposed to just the accounts of suspects. Effectively, all 500 million+ Yahoo Mail users were presumed to be guilty.
Instead of searching stored messages, this directive forced Yahoo to scan incoming messages in real-time.
Because ALL incoming email messages were targeted, this program spied on every person who emailed a Yahoo Mail account, violating the privacy of users around the world who may not even have been using a US email service.
What does this mean for US tech companies?
This is a terrible precedent and ushers in a new era of global mass surveillance. It means that US tech companies that serve billions of users around the world can now be forced to act as extensions of the US surveillance apparatus. The problem extends well beyond Yahoo. As was reported earlier, Yahoo did not fight the secret directive because Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and the Yahoo legal team did not believe that they could successfully resist the directive.
We believe that Yahoo’s assessment is correct. If it was possible to fight the directive, Yahoo certainly would have done so since they previously fought against secret FISA court orders in 2008. It does not make sense that US surveillance agencies would serve Yahoo Mail with such an order but ignore Gmail, the world’s largest email provider, or Outlook. There is no doubt that the secret surveillance software is also present in Gmail and Outlook, or at least there is nothing preventing Gmail and Outlook from being forced to comply with a similar directive in the future. From a legal perspective, there is nothing that makes Yahoo particularly vulnerable, or Google particularly invulnerable.
Google and Microsoft have come out to deny they participated in US government mandated mass surveillance, but under a National Security Letter (NSL) gag order, Google and Microsoft would have no choice but to deny the allegations or risk breaking US law (our analysis of Yahoo’s denial is at the bottom of this post). Again ,there is no conceivable reason US intelligence would target Yahoo but ignore Gmail, so we must consider this to be the most probable scenario, particularly since gag orders have become the norm rather than the exception.
In effect, the US government has now officially co-opted US tech companies to perform mass surveillance on all users, regardless of whether they are under US jurisdiction or not. Given the huge amount of data that Google has, this is a truly scary proposition.
How does this impact ProtonMail?
ProtonMail’s secure email service is based in Switzerland and all our servers are located in Switzerland, so all user data is maintained under the protection of Swiss privacy laws. ProtonMail cannot be compelled to perform mass surveillance on our users, nor be compelled to act on behalf of US intelligence. ProtonMail also utilizes end-to-end encryption which means we do not have the capability to read user emails in the first place, so we couldn’t hand over user email data even if we wanted to.
However, since email is an open system, any unencrypted email that goes out of ProtonMail, to Yahoo Mail for example, could potentially have been swept up by these mass surveillance programs and sent to US government agencies. This is why if you want to avoid having your communications scanned and saved by US government agencies, it is important to invite friends, family, and colleagues to use non-US email accounts such as ProtonMail or other email services offered by European companies.
What can the rest of the world do about this?
Unfortunately, the tech sector today is entirely dominated by US companies. Just like Google has a monopoly on search, the US government has a near monopoly on mass surveillance. Even without US government pressure, most US tech companies also have perverse economic incentives to slowly chip away at digital privacy.
This week, we have again seen how easily the massive amounts of private data retained by US tech companies can be abused by US intelligence for their own purposes. Without alternatives to the US tech giants, the rest of the world has no choice but to consent to this. This is an unprecedented challenge, but it also presents an unprecedented opportunity, particularly for Europe.
Now is the time for Europe to invest in its own tech sector, unbeholden to outside interests. This is the only way the European community can continue to safeguard the European ideals of privacy, liberty, and freedom online. It is time for European governments and citizens to act before it is too late.
The only chance for privacy to prevail against these attacks is for the global community to support a new generation of web services which protect privacy by default. These services, such as ProtonMail’s encrypted email service, must operate with a business model where users can donate or pay for services, instead of giving up data and privacy. The security community also has an obligation to make these new service just as easy to use as the ones they replace.
Services such as secure email, search, and cloud storage are now vital to our lives. Their importance means that for the good of all citizens, we need to develop private alternatives that are aligned with users, and free from corporate greed and government overreach. Crowdfunded services like ProtonMail are rising to the challenge, but we need more support from the global community to successfully take on better funded US tech giants. Privacy matters, and your support is essential to ensure the Internet of the future is one that protects our rights.
Best Regards,
The ProtonMail Team
You can get a free secure email account from ProtonMail here.
You can support our mission by upgrading to a paid plan or donating so that we can grow beyond email.
Analysis of Yahoo Denial:
Yahoo, like every other US tech company, has issued a denial, basically denying Reuter’s account of the mass surveillance. Here is Yahoo’s denial, word for word:
“The article is misleading. We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure. The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems.”
It is curious that Yahoo’s response to this incident is only 29 words, but upon closer examination, it is a very carefully crafted 29 words. First, Yahoo calls the reports misleading. This is a curious choice of words because it does not claim that the report is false. Finally, Yahoo states that, “The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems.” While this could be a true statement, it does NOT deny that the scanning could have been present on Yahoo’s systems in the past.
The same day as the Yahoo denial, the New York Times obtained independent verification of the Reuter’s story from two US government officials. This allowed the New York Times to confirm the following facts:
Yahoo is in fact under a gag order and from a legal standpoint, they cannot confirm the mass surveillance (in other words, they must deny the story or avoid making any statements that would be seen as a confirmation).
The Yahoo mass data collection did in fact take place, but the collection is no longer occurring at present time. Thus, we now understand the disingenuous wording of the last sentence in Yahoo’s statement.
Yahoo’s denial (or non-denial, as the case may be), followed immediately by confirmation by the NYT demonstrates the new reality that denials by US tech companies cannot really be taken at face value anymore. It is not that US tech companies are intentionally trying to mislead their customers, but many times, they have no choice due to the gag orders that now inevitably accompany any government requests. If statements from US tech companies turn out to be suspect (as in the Yahoo example), the likelihood of the public ever knowing the truth becomes highly unlikely, and this brings us to a dangerous place.
About the Author
Andy Yen
Andy is the Co-Founder of ProtonMail. He is a long time advocate of privacy rights and has spoken at TED, SXSW, and the Asian Investigative Journalism Conference about online privacy issues. Previously, Andy was a research scientist at CERN and has a PhD in Particle Physics from Harvard University. You can watch his TED talk online to learn more about ProtonMail's mission.
-
:-o :-o :-o
-
http://www.futurity.org/surveillance-privacy-internet-book-1096512/
How to hide from the internet’s surveillance machine
Posted by Eileen Reynolds-NYU January 27th, 2016
You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license.
It’s a common assumption that being online means you’ll have to part ways with your personal data and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Not true, according to two communication professors. In their new book, Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest (MIT Press, 2015), they argue both that your privacy is being eroded through acts way, way more heinous than you might think, and that contrary to popular belief, there is something you can do about it.
Part philosophical treatise and part rousing how-to, Obfuscation reads at times as an urgent call to arms.
“Machines don’t forget.”
“We mean to start a revolution with this book,” its authors declare. “Although its lexicon of methods can be, and has been, taken up by tyrants, authoritarians, and secret police, our revolution is especially suited for use by the small players, the humble, the stuck, those not in a position to decline or opt out or exert control.”
One of the tricky things about online tracking is that it’s so complex and invisible that we aren’t necessarily cognizant of it happening,” says Finn Brunton, coauthor and professor at New York University. “Part of the goal of Obfuscation is to draw attention to precisely that problem.”
Consider the trick by which, in loading a single (practically invisible) pixel onto a website you’re visiting, an ad server can, without your knowledge, collect all kinds of information about the browser and device that you’re using—information that could then be used down the line to, say, jack up the price on a plane ticket the next time you’re making travel arrangements, serve up a selection of higher-end goods the next time you search on an online retailer’s site, or, on the flip side, make it tougher for you to get a loan, if something about your data gets flagged as a credit risk.
This is a clear example of what Brunton and coauthor Helen Nissenbaum, also a professor at NYU, describe as “information asymmetry,” where, as they write, the companies collecting data “know much about us, and we know little about them or what they can do.”
The surveillance background
It’s not just that we haven’t agreed to having our personal information collected, it’s that the invisible processes of dossier building are so complex, and their consequences so difficult to predict, that it would be virtually impossible to understand exactly what we’re being asked to consent to.
Whereas NSA snooping makes headlines, other forms of quiet surveillance go unnoticed (and unregulated), to the benefit of shadowy entities making bank in the data economy—or even police using software to calculate citizens’ threat “scores.”
“Machines don’t forget,” Brunton says. Suppose you have an agreement with one company, “the best company run by the best people,” he says, “but then they go bankrupt, or get subpoenaed, or acquired. Your data ends up on the schedule of assets,” and then you don’t know where it might end up.”
[Do your friends give your data to third parties?]
To be clear, the authors—whose manifesto irked critics who argue that these kinds of transactions are what finance the “free” internet—aren’t against online advertising per se.
“Before ad networks started the surveillance background,” Nissenbaum explains, “there was traditional advertising, where Nike could buy an ad space on, say, the New York Times [website], or contextual advertising, where Nike would buy space on Sports Illustrated. There were plenty of ways of advertising that didn’t involve tracking people.”
Nowadays, though, Brunton says, “Many online sites that produce content you use and enjoy don’t get that much money out of the advertising, and yet there’s a whole galaxy of third-party groups on the back end swapping data back and forth for profit, in a way that’s not necessarily more effective for the merchant, the content provider, or you.
“Then add on top of it all that the data can be misused, and you have a network that is less secure and built around surveillance. I think that starts to shift the balance in favor of taking aggressive action.”
That’s where obfuscation—defined in the book as “the production of noise modeled on an existing signal in order to make a collection of data more ambiguous, confusing, harder to exploit, more difficult to act on, and therefore less valuable”—comes in.
TrackMeNot, for example, one of several elegant obfuscation tools designed by Nissenbaum and NYU computer science colleagues, serves up bogus queries to thwart search engines’ efforts to build a profile on you, so that when you search, say, “leather boots,” it also sends along “ghost” terms like “Tom Cruise,” “Spanish American War,” and “painters tape” (which don’t affect your search results). Another tool, ADNAUSEUM, registers a click on all the ads in your ad blocker, rendering futile any attempt to build a profile of your preferences based on ads you click.
History lessons
Even as they look to future battles, Brunton and Nissenbaum draw inspiration from the past, offering a compendium of examples of obfuscation tactics used throughout history.
World War II planes released chaff—strips of black paper coated with foil—to overwhelm enemy radar with false targets. Poker players sometimes employ false tells; baseball coaches hide signs amid a string of meaningless hand gestures.
People worried that their private conversations may be being recorded can play a “babble tape” in the background—an update to the classic mobster strategy of meeting in noisy bathrooms to safeguard against FBI audio surveillance.
[Why your phone is the perfect surveillance tool]
Shoppers can swap loyalty cards with strangers to prevent brick-and-mortar stores from building a record of their purchases. The orb-weaving spider, vulnerable to attacks by wasps, builds spider decoys to position around its web.
Brunton and Nissenbaum are often asked in interviews about what simple steps even technophobes can take to protect their privacy. The answer: It depends on what scares you most.
“Are you worried about Google?” Brunton asks. “About your insurance company? Where are the places that you want to push back?” A theme that emerges in the book is that obfuscation tactics, while often similar in principle, vary a lot in practice; each unique threat requires a unique defense.
“The ideal world for me is one where you don’t need to obfuscate.”
“Camouflage is often very specific,” Nissenbaum explains. “This animal is worried about these particular predators with this particular eyesight. It’s a general thing but in the instance, it is quite specialized.”
That makes for a big challenge, since there are so many threats—and the notion of “opting out” of all types of surveillance has become so impractical as to be nearly nonsensical. (In the book, Brunton and Nissenbaum quip that it would mean leading “the life of an undocumented migrant laborer of the 1920s, with no internet, no phones, no insurance, no assets, riding the rails, being paid off the books for illegal manual work.”)
Brunton, for example, refuses to use E-ZPass (which, in addition to enabling your cashless commute, announces your location to readers that could be waiting anywhere—not just in tollbooths), but can’t resist the convenience of Google Maps. And Nissenbaum declined to share her location with acquaintances using the iPhone’s “Find My Friends” app, but lamented that there’s no box to check to keep Apple from knowing her whereabouts.
Brunton and Nissenbaum stress that obfuscation isn’t a solution to the problem of constant surveillance, but rather a stopgap to draw attention to the issue and the need for better regulation.
“The ideal world for me,” Nissenbaum says, is “one where you don’t need to obfuscate.”
She draws an analogy between our time and the moment when, soon after telephones became mainstream, the US passed laws forbidding phone companies from listening in on their customers’ conversations.
“You could imagine a different route, where they could eavesdrop and say, ‘Oh, I can hear you discussing with your mom that you would like to go to Mexico in the summer, why don’t we send you a few coupons for Mexican travel?'” Until we pass similar laws to address our current predicament, we’ll be stuck with “the information universe eavesdropping on everything we do.”
Brunton draws an even bolder comparison—between the dawn of the information age and the (much) earlier transition from agrarian to industrial life. Indeed, history is a testament to how societies can and do find equilibrium with relation to transformative new technologies.
The bad news, in the case of the Industrial Revolution, though, is that “in the middle of that shift, horrific things happened to huge populations of people,” Brunton says. Today, he argues, we have the opportunity to prevent the digital equivalent of such horrors. “Can find ways to prevent the worst outcomes for vulnerable populations?”
-
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2017/09/will-facebook-become-the-worlds-most-powerful-government-contractor.html
MONDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 2017
Will Facebook become the World's Most Powerful Government Contractor?
Facebook, with a COMPLETE social graph, becomes more than an advertising platform. It becomes an arm of government.
Facebook's Network
FACEBOOK'S GLOBAL SOCIAL NETWORK VISUALIZED
Here's how. Facebook recently passed:
2 billion monthly users.
That’s~70% of the 2.8 billion Internet users living outside of China/Russia (they use a different social networking system).
With slowing rates of growth for Facebook and the Internet (due to saturation), Facebook is likely to hit 3.5 billion monthly users by 2025.
The Complete Social Graph
At 3.5 billion users in 2025, Facebook’s social network will be more than half of the 6.5 billion people living outside of China/Russia. That’s a network that is large enough and deep enough to:
create a global census that can “see” nearly everyone on the planet , even if they don’t have a Facebook account.
enable real-time tracking on nearly everyone on the planet using smartphone GPS data and ancillary information (mentions of location/who you are with/pictures).
create the largest micro-targeting database on earth, from pictures to posted links to likes. Details on the interests and desires of billions of people.
What Does Facebook do with a Complete Social Graph?
The simple and straightforward answer is to build a very profitable advertising platform. However, the success of that advertising platform will be based on the ability of Facebook to avoid intrusive government regulation. To accomplish that, Facebook will develop services it can provide governments to better secure, control, and manage their citizens in a volatile global environment. In exchange for these services, Facebook will avoid regulations that will limit its ability to make money. Here’s more detail on the services it could provide:
Surveillance. The ability to ID anyone using facial recognition AIs (trained on the trillions of photos uploaded to the platform) and then track their movements globally. Border security and access control (buildings and government services). Tracking movement domestically (from CCTVs to Fastlane pics).
Censorship. The ability to limit domestic political conversations to those approved by the government. As the primary source of news in nearly country (outside of China), Facebook has the ability to limit sources to approved channels, prevent the discussion of banned topics, and steer conversations in subtle ways.
Counter-terrorism. Facebook will peer into private conversations and do the network analysis to ID potential extremists. It will also actively sabotage or intervene in terrorist/extremist recruiting networks to damage their effectiveness in securing recruits. Facebook now has the ability to offer NSA scale services, with better data, to nations around the world.
-
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2017/09/the-long-night-ahead.html
FRIDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 2017
The Long Night Ahead
Facebook just declared war against "disruptive" information. In addition to hundreds of new human censors, they are training AI censors capable of identifying and deleting 'unacceptable' information found in the discussions of all two billion members in real time. This development highlights what the real danger posed by a socially networked world actually is.
The REAL danger facing a world interconnected by social networking isn't disruption. As we have seen on numerous occasions, the danger posed by disruptive information and events is fleeting. Disruption, although potentially painful in the short term, doesn't last, nor is it truly damaging over the long term. In fact, the true danger posed by an internetworked world is just the opposite of disruption.
This danger is an all encompassing online orthodoxy. A sameness of thought and approach enforced by hundreds of millions of socially internetworked adherents. A global orthodoxy that ruthless narrows public thought down to a single, barren, ideological framework. A ruling network that prevents dissent and locks us into stagnation and inevitable failure as it runs afoul of reality and human nature.
This ruling network already exists. It already has millions of online members and it is growing and deepening with each passing day -- extending its tendrils into the media, the civil service, tech companies, and academia. There's little doubt that over time it will eventually exert decisive influence over the entire government as well.
However, in order to exert authoritarian control over our decision making, it needs control over the flow of information in our society. Merely controlling the online debate is insufficient. For real power, the ruling network needs to control the information flows on our information infrastructure -- Facebook, Google, and Amazon -- and that's exactly the power it is now getting.
However, as large and powerful as this network already is, I still believe this future is reversible. We still have a short time before a long night descends across the world.
Sincerely,
John Robb
Writing on a cool New England afternoon. Feeling a bit like Hayek today.
PS: As if on cue, authoritarianism that diminishes the role of the individual is in the wind:
a majority of US students now oppose free speech on campus.
a free fall in support for democracy as a preferred form of governance among young people.
a majority of young people now oppose capitalism.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDX3T2z89yM
Watching you.
-
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasionBig data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens
The Chinese government plans to launch its Social Credit System in 2020. The aim? To judge the trustworthiness – or otherwise – of its 1.3 billion residents
Kevin Hong
By RACHEL BOTSMAN
Saturday 21 October 2017
On June 14, 2014, the State Council of China published an ominous-sounding document called "Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System". In the way of Chinese policy documents, it was a lengthy and rather dry affair, but it contained a radical idea. What if there was a national trust score that rated the kind of citizen you were?
Imagine a world where many of your daily activities were constantly monitored and evaluated: what you buy at the shops and online; where you are at any given time; who your friends are and how you interact with them; how many hours you spend watching content or playing video games; and what bills and taxes you pay (or not). It's not hard to picture, because most of that already happens, thanks to all those data-collecting behemoths like Google, Facebook and Instagram or health-tracking apps such as Fitbit. But now imagine a system where all these behaviours are rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according to rules set by the government. That would create your Citizen Score and it would tell everyone whether or not you were trustworthy. Plus, your rating would be publicly ranked against that of the entire population and used to determine your eligibility for a mortgage or a job, where your children can go to school - or even just your chances of getting a date.
A futuristic vision of Big Brother out of control? No, it's already getting underway in China, where the government is developing the Social Credit System (SCS) to rate the trustworthiness of its 1.3 billion citizens. The Chinese government is pitching the system as a desirable way to measure and enhance "trust" nationwide and to build a culture of "sincerity". As the policy states, "It will forge a public opinion environment where keeping trust is glorious. It will strengthen sincerity in government affairs, commercial sincerity, social sincerity and the construction of judicial credibility."
Others are less sanguine about its wider purpose. "It is very ambitious in both depth and scope, including scrutinising individual behaviour and what books people are reading. It's Amazon's consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist," is how Johan Lagerkvist, a Chinese internet specialist at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, described the social credit system. Rogier Creemers, a post-doctoral scholar specialising in Chinese law and governance at the Van Vollenhoven Institute at Leiden University, who published a comprehensive translation of the plan, compared it to "Yelp reviews with the nanny state watching over your shoulder".
For now, technically, participating in China's Citizen Scores is voluntary. But by 2020 it will be mandatory. The behaviour of every single citizen and legal person (which includes every company or other entity)in China will be rated and ranked, whether they like it or not.
Kevin Hong
Prior to its national roll-out in 2020, the Chinese government is taking a watch-and-learn approach. In this marriage between communist oversight and capitalist can-do, the government has given a licence to eight private companies to come up with systems and algorithms for social credit scores. Predictably, data giants currently run two of the best-known projects.
The first is with China Rapid Finance, a partner of the social-network behemoth Tencent and developer of the messaging app WeChat with more than 850 million active users. The other, Sesame Credit, is run by the Ant Financial Services Group (AFSG), an affiliate company of Alibaba. Ant Financial sells insurance products and provides loans to small- to medium-sized businesses. However, the real star of Ant is AliPay, its payments arm that people use not only to buy things online, but also for restaurants, taxis, school fees, cinema tickets and even to transfer money to each other.
Sesame Credit has also teamed up with other data-generating platforms, such as Didi Chuxing, the ride-hailing company that was Uber's main competitor in China before it acquired the American company's Chinese operations in 2016, and Baihe, the country's largest online matchmaking service. It's not hard to see how that all adds up to gargantuan amounts of big data that Sesame Credit can tap into to assess how people behave and rate them accordingly.
So just how are people rated? Individuals on Sesame Credit are measured by a score ranging between 350 and 950 points. Alibaba does not divulge the "complex algorithm" it uses to calculate the number but they do reveal the five factors taken into account. The first is credit history. For example, does the citizen pay their electricity or phone bill on time? Next is fulfilment capacity, which it defines in its guidelines as "a user's ability to fulfil his/her contract obligations". The third factor is personal characteristics, verifying personal information such as someone's mobile phone number and address. But the fourth category, behaviour and preference, is where it gets interesting.
Under this system, something as innocuous as a person's shopping habits become a measure of character. Alibaba admits it judges people by the types of products they buy. "Someone who plays video games for ten hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person," says Li Yingyun, Sesame's Technology Director. "Someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility." So the system not only investigates behaviour - it shapes it. It "nudges" citizens away from purchases and behaviours the government does not like.
Friends matter, too. The fifth category is interpersonal relationships. What does their choice of online friends and their interactions say about the person being assessed? Sharing what Sesame Credit refers to as "positive energy" online, nice messages about the government or how well the country's economy is doing, will make your score go up.
Alibaba is adamant that, currently, anything negative posted on social media does not affect scores (we don't know if this is true or not because the algorithm is secret). But you can see how this might play out when the government's own citizen score system officially launches in 2020. Even though there is no suggestion yet that any of the eight private companies involved in the ongoing pilot scheme will be ultimately responsible for running the government's own system, it's hard to believe that the government will not want to extract the maximum amount of data for its SCS, from the pilots. If that happens, and continues as the new normal under the government's own SCS it will result in private platforms acting essentially as spy agencies for the government. They may have no choice.
Posting dissenting political opinions or links mentioning Tiananmen Square has never been wise in China, but now it could directly hurt a citizen's rating. But here's the real kicker: a person's own score will also be affected by what their online friends say and do, beyond their own contact with them. If someone they are connected to online posts a negative comment, their own score will also be dragged down.
So why have millions of people already signed up to what amounts to a trial run for a publicly endorsed government surveillance system? There may be darker, unstated reasons - fear of reprisals, for instance, for those who don't put their hand up - but there is also a lure, in the form of rewards and "special privileges" for those citizens who prove themselves to be "trustworthy" on Sesame Credit.
If their score reaches 600, they can take out a Just Spend loan of up to 5,000 yuan (around £565) to use to shop online, as long as it's on an Alibaba site. Reach 650 points, they may rent a car without leaving a deposit. They are also entitled to faster check-in at hotels and use of the VIP check-in at Beijing Capital International Airport. Those with more than 666 points can get a cash loan of up to 50,000 yuan (£5,700), obviously from Ant Financial Services. Get above 700 and they can apply for Singapore travel without supporting documents such as an employee letter. And at 750, they get fast-tracked application to a coveted pan-European Schengen visa. "I think the best way to understand the system is as a sort of bastard love child of a loyalty scheme," says Creemers.
Higher scores have already become a status symbol, with almost 100,000 people bragging about their scores on Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter) within months of launch. A citizen's score can even affect their odds of getting a date, or a marriage partner, because the higher their Sesame rating, the more prominent their dating profile is on Baihe.
Sesame Credit already offers tips to help individuals improve their ranking, including warning about the downsides of friending someone who has a low score. This might lead to the rise of score advisers, who will share tips on how to gain points, or reputation consultants willing to offer expert advice on how to strategically improve a ranking or get off the trust-breaking blacklist.
Indeed, Sesame Credit is basically a big data gamified version of the Communist Party's surveillance methods; the disquieting dang'an. The regime kept a dossier on every individual that tracked political and personal transgressions. A citizen's dang'an followed them for life, from schools to jobs. People started reporting on friends and even family members, raising suspicion and lowering social trust in China. The same thing will happen with digital dossiers. People will have an incentive to say to their friends and family, "Don't post that. I don't want you to hurt your score but I also don't want you to hurt mine."
We're also bound to see the birth of reputation black markets selling under-the-counter ways to boost trustworthiness. In the same way that Facebook Likes and Twitter followers can be bought, individuals will pay to manipulate their score. What about keeping the system secure? Hackers (some even state-backed) could change or steal the digitally stored information.
"People with low ratings will have slower internet speeds; restricted access to restaurants and the removal of the right to travel"
Rachel Botsman, author of ‘Who Can You Trust?’
The new system reflects a cunning paradigm shift. As we've noted, instead of trying to enforce stability or conformity with a big stick and a good dose of top-down fear, the government is attempting to make obedience feel like gaming. It is a method of social control dressed up in some points-reward system. It's gamified obedience.
In a trendy neighbourhood in downtown Beijing, the BBC news services hit the streets in October 2015 to ask people about their Sesame Credit ratings. Most spoke about the upsides. But then, who would publicly criticise the system? Ding, your score might go down. Alarmingly, few people understood that a bad score could hurt them in the future. Even more concerning was how many people had no idea that they were being rated.
Currently, Sesame Credit does not directly penalise people for being "untrustworthy" - it's more effective to lock people in with treats for good behaviour. But Hu Tao, Sesame Credit's chief manager, warns people that the system is designed so that "untrustworthy people can't rent a car, can't borrow money or even can't find a job". She has even disclosed that Sesame Credit has approached China's Education Bureau about sharing a list of its students who cheated on national examinations, in order to make them pay into the future for their dishonesty.
Penalties are set to change dramatically when the government system becomes mandatory in 2020. Indeed, on September 25, 2016, the State Council General Office updated its policy entitled "Warning and Punishment Mechanisms for Persons Subject to Enforcement for Trust-Breaking". The overriding principle is simple: "If trust is broken in one place, restrictions are imposed everywhere," the policy document states.
For instance, people with low ratings will have slower internet speeds; restricted access to restaurants, nightclubs or golf courses; and the removal of the right to travel freely abroad with, I quote, "restrictive control on consumption within holiday areas or travel businesses". Scores will influence a person's rental applications, their ability to get insurance or a loan and even social-security benefits. Citizens with low scores will not be hired by certain employers and will be forbidden from obtaining some jobs, including in the civil service, journalism and legal fields, where of course you must be deemed trustworthy. Low-rating citizens will also be restricted when it comes to enrolling themselves or their children in high-paying private schools. I am not fabricating this list of punishments. It's the reality Chinese citizens will face. As the government document states, the social credit system will "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step".
According to Luciano Floridi, a professor of philosophy and ethics of information at the University of Oxford and the director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute, there have been three critical "de-centering shifts" that have altered our view in self-understanding: Copernicus's model of the Earth orbiting the Sun; Darwin's theory of natural selection; and Freud's claim that our daily actions are controlled by the unconscious mind.
Floridi believes we are now entering the fourth shift, as what we do online and offline merge into an onlife. He asserts that, as our society increasingly becomes an infosphere, a mixture of physical and virtual experiences, we are acquiring an onlife personality - different from who we innately are in the "real world" alone. We see this writ large on Facebook, where people present an edited or idealised portrait of their lives. Think about your Uber experiences. Are you just a little bit nicer to the driver because you know you will be rated? But Uber ratings are nothing compared to Peeple, an app launched in March 2016, which is like a Yelp for humans. It allows you to assign ratings and reviews to everyone you know - your spouse, neighbour, boss and even your ex. A profile displays a "Peeple Number", a score based on all the feedback and recommendations you receive. Worryingly, once your name is in the Peeple system, it's there for good. You can't opt out.
Peeple has forbidden certain bad behaviours including mentioning private health conditions, making profanities or being sexist (however you objectively assess that). But there are few rules on how people are graded or standards about transparency.
China's trust system might be voluntary as yet, but it's already having consequences. In February 2017, the country's Supreme People's Court announced that 6.15 million of its citizens had been banned from taking flights over the past four years for social misdeeds. The ban is being pointed to as a step toward blacklisting in the SCS. "We have signed a memorandum… [with over] 44 government departments in order to limit 'discredited' people on multiple levels," says Meng Xiang, head of the executive department of the Supreme Court. Another 1.65 million blacklisted people cannot take trains.
Where these systems really descend into nightmarish territory is that the trust algorithms used are unfairly reductive. They don't take into account context. For instance, one person might miss paying a bill or a fine because they were in hospital; another may simply be a freeloader. And therein lies the challenge facing all of us in the digital world, and not just the Chinese. If life-determining algorithms are here to stay, we need to figure out how they can embrace the nuances, inconsistencies and contradictions inherent in human beings and how they can reflect real life.
You could see China's so-called trust plan as Orwell's 1984 meets Pavlov's dogs. Act like a good citizen, be rewarded and be made to think you're having fun. It's worth remembering, however, that personal scoring systems have been present in the west for decades.
More than 70 years ago, two men called Bill Fair and Earl Isaac invented credit scores. Today, companies use FICO scores to determine many financial decisions, including the interest rate on our mortgage or whether we should be given a loan.
For the majority of Chinese people, they have never had credit scores and so they can't get credit. "Many people don't own houses, cars or credit cards in China, so that kind of information isn't available to measure," explains Wen Quan, an influential blogger who writes about technology and finance. "The central bank has the financial data from 800 million people, but only 320 million have a traditional credit history." According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, the annual economic loss caused by lack of credit information is more than 600 billion yuan (£68bn).
China's lack of a national credit system is why the government is adamant that Citizen Scores are long overdue and badly needed to fix what they refer to as a "trust deficit". In a poorly regulated market, the sale of counterfeit and substandard products is a massive problem. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 63 per cent of all fake goods, from watches to handbags to baby food, originate from China. "The level of micro corruption is enormous," Creemers says. "So if this particular scheme results in more effective oversight and accountability, it will likely be warmly welcomed."
The government also argues that the system is a way to bring in those people left out of traditional credit systems, such as students and low-income households. Professor Wang Shuqin from the Office of Philosophy and Social Science at Capital Normal University in China recently won the bid to help the government develop the system that she refers to as "China's Social Faithful System". Without such a mechanism, doing business in China is risky, she stresses, as about half of the signed contracts are not kept. "Given the speed of the digital economy it's crucial that people can quickly verify each other's credit worthiness," she says. "The behaviour of the majority is determined by their world of thoughts. A person who believes in socialist core values is behaving more decently." She regards the "moral standards" the system assesses, as well as financial data, as a bonus.
Indeed, the State Council's aim is to raise the "honest mentality and credit levels of the entire society" in order to improve "the overall competitiveness of the country". Is it possible that the SCS is in fact a more desirably transparent approach to surveillance in a country that has a long history of watching its citizens? "As a Chinese person, knowing that everything I do online is being tracked, would I rather be aware of the details of what is being monitored and use this information to teach myself how to abide by the rules?" says Rasul Majid, a Chinese blogger based in Shanghai who writes about behavioural design and gaming psychology. "Or would I rather live in ignorance and hope/wish/dream that personal privacy still exists and that our ruling bodies respect us enough not to take advantage?" Put simply, Majid thinks the system gives him a tiny bit more control over his data.
Kevin Hong
When I tell westerners about the Social Credit System in China, their responses are fervent and visceral. Yet we already rate restaurants, movies, books and even doctors. Facebook, meanwhile, is now capable of identifying you in pictures without seeing your face; it only needs your clothes, hair and body type to tag you in an image with 83 per cent accuracy.
In 2015, the OECD published a study revealing that in the US there are at least 24.9 connected devices per 100 inhabitants. All kinds of companies scrutinise the "big data" emitted from these devices to understand our lives and desires, and to predict our actions in ways that we couldn't even predict ourselves.
Governments around the world are already in the business of monitoring and rating. In the US, the National Security Agency (NSA) is not the only official digital eye following the movements of its citizens. In 2015, the US Transportation Security Administration proposed the idea of expanding the PreCheck background checks to include social-media records, location data and purchase history. The idea was scrapped after heavy criticism, but that doesn't mean it's dead. We already live in a world of predictive algorithms that determine if we are a threat, a risk, a good citizen and even if we are trustworthy. We're getting closer to the Chinese system - the expansion of credit scoring into life scoring - even if we don't know we are.
So are we heading for a future where we will all be branded online and data-mined? It's certainly trending that way. Barring some kind of mass citizen revolt to wrench back privacy, we are entering an age where an individual's actions will be judged by standards they can't control and where that judgement can't be erased. The consequences are not only troubling; they're permanent. Forget the right to delete or to be forgotten, to be young and foolish.
While it might be too late to stop this new era, we do have choices and rights we can exert now. For one thing, we need to be able rate the raters. In his book The Inevitable, Kevin Kelly describes a future where the watchers and the watched will transparently track each other. "Our central choice now is whether this surveillance is a secret, one-way panopticon - or a mutual, transparent kind of 'coveillance' that involves watching the watchers," he writes.
Our trust should start with individuals within government (or whoever is controlling the system). We need trustworthy mechanisms to make sure ratings and data are used responsibly and with our permission. To trust the system, we need to reduce the unknowns. That means taking steps to reduce the opacity of the algorithms. The argument against mandatory disclosures is that if you know what happens under the hood, the system could become rigged or hacked. But if humans are being reduced to a rating that could significantly impact their lives, there must be transparency in how the scoring works.
In China, certain citizens, such as government officials, will likely be deemed above the system. What will be the public reaction when their unfavourable actions don't affect their score? We could see a Panama Papers 3.0 for reputation fraud.
It is still too early to know how a culture of constant monitoring plus rating will turn out. What will happen when these systems, charting the social, moral and financial history of an entire population, come into full force? How much further will privacy and freedom of speech (long under siege in China) be eroded? Who will decide which way the system goes? These are questions we all need to consider, and soon. Today China, tomorrow a place near you. The real questions about the future of trust are not technological or economic; they are ethical.
If we are not vigilant, distributed trust could become networked shame. Life will become an endless popularity contest, with us all vying for the highest rating that only a few can attain.
This is an extract from Who Can You Trust? How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart (Penguin Portfolio) by Rachel Botsman, published on October 4. Since this piece was written, The People's Bank of China delayed the licences to the eight companies conducting social credit pilots. The government's plans to launch the Social Credit System in 2020 remain unchanged
-
Besides reading your emails, knowing all your searches and tracking your location and listening in your home, Google is reading your Docs too.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/11/01/google-reading-docs/
Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users
http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/11/technology/google-home-mini-security-flaw/index.html
A (waived?) right of Privacy
-
Besides reading your emails, knowing all your searches and tracking your location and listening in your home, Google is reading your Docs too.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/11/01/google-reading-docs/
Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users
http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/11/technology/google-home-mini-security-flaw/index.html
A (waived?) right of Privacy
Know anyone who really reads the terms of service for anything?
-
By Jim Harper
Nov. 28, 2017 6:36 p.m. ET
38 COMMENTS
A case that comes before the Supreme Court Wednesday may erode or solidify Justice Antonin Scalia’s legacy. How the justices decide in Carpenter v. U.S. won’t matter as much as how they reason. If they use the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test to decide whether the government can access cellphone users’ location data without a warrant, Scalia’s contributions to Fourth Amendment jurisprudence will be negated. But if the high court recognizes that data as owned in part by cellphone users, Scalia’s legacy will be secured, along with the Constitution’s safeguards against unreasonable search and seizure.
The plaintiff, Timothy Ivory Carpenter, was convicted in 2014 of participating in a string of armed robberies in the Detroit area and sentenced to 116 years in federal prison. Investigators obtained court orders netting 127 days of Mr. Carpenter’s cellphone records, showing that his phone was in communication with cell towers near the sites of four robberies. The court will decide whether investigators should have gained access to that data under a relatively low statutory standard requiring that the information be “relevant” to an ongoing investigation, or whether they should have asked a court for a warrant based on probable cause.
Since 1963, the dominant approach to the Fourth Amendment has been derived from a solo concurrence in Katz v. U.S. setting out the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test. That test defines a search as having occurred anytime a government agent violates a defendant’s reasonable privacy expectations. It has often operated as a one-way ratchet against Fourth Amendment protection, using curious logic.
–– ADVERTISEMENT ––
Because possession of drugs and other contraband is illegal, concealing them is unreasonable. Thus, courts have held that whatever government action turns up such contraband is not a search. Actions that most would consider searches, such as directing drug-sniffing dogs at people and flying planes low over suspects’ houses, are treated as nonsearches that don’t require warrants.
Smith v. Maryland (1979) is the premier precedent supporting government access to telecommunications data. In Smith, government agents acting without a warrant persuaded a Baltimore telephone company to place a pen register on the phone line of a burglary-and-stalking suspect. The device captured the numbers of his outgoing calls, showing that he had dialed the victim’s home number. The Supreme Court found there was no reasonable expectation of privacy and thus no seizure or search.
Today the government interprets Smith as providing warrantless access to troves of data about the locations and movements of every cellphone user, subject to that statutory relevance standard. That data can reveal sensitive information, such as when people seek medical or psychological treatment, where they go to church, their relationships and business dealings, attendance at political events, and more. The appeals court in Carpenter adopted Smith’s reasoning.
For years, Scalia pointedly avoided the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test. His 2001 decision in Kyllo v. U.S., for example, addressed the use of a thermal imaging device to detect heat patterns emanating from a home thought to contain a marijuana-growing operation. Scalia didn’t refer to privacy expectations in his argument. Rather, he claimed that when government agents use an exotic device “to explore the details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a ‘search’ and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.”
In 2012, another major Scalia decision again steered around the potholed logic of “reasonable expectations.” In U.S. v. Jones, Scalia’s majority opinion found that attaching a Global Positioning System device to a car without a warrant, and using that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search. In 2015, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York polished Scalia’s logic. Attachment of the GPS device was “a technical trespass on the defendant’s vehicle”—a small but important seizure that put the car to the government’s purposes.
Gauzy appeals to privacy expectations only complicate what ought to be straightforward: Searching is searching; seizing is seizing.
Cellphone privacy policies give consumers many rights to control their telecommunications data. Essentially these are property rights, which on their own should require that the government obtain a warrant before searching and seizing digital records. In Carpenter the court may find that such contracts help create an “expectation of privacy.” Or it may find that there isn’t a reasonable privacy expectation. Seizing data and examining its contents would become neither seizure nor search, giving government agents a free hand.
That kind of illogic would be a loss for Justice Scalia’s legacy. The court should find that telecommunications data are owned in part by cellphone users. A warrant is required for the government to take such property and examine it.
Mr. Harper is vice president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has filed an amicus brief in Carpenter v. U.S.
-
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/27/hp-installing-hp-touchpoint-analytics-client-telemetry-service/
If you have an HP computer, read this.
-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5200661/Is-phone-listening-word-say.html
Is your phone listening to your every word and WATCHING you through your phone's camera? How thousands of people are convinced 'coincidence' adverts are anything but
Writer Jen Lewis posted viral image to Twitter of a Facebook ad featuring women wearing identical outfit to her
Tweet went viral with hundreds sharing their stories of social networks 'listening in' on conversations
Journalist Julia Lawrence (with the help of daughter Lois) investigated the powers of online advertising for the Daily Mail
By JULIA LAWRENCE FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 20:44 EST, 20 December 2017 | UPDATED: 08:52 EST, 21 December 2017
We were sitting in a rooftop restaurant, 30 storeys up, overlooking the Empire State building in New York, when my daughter confessed that she thought she was being spied on by a professional network of cyberspooks.
‘Look at this,’ said Lois, presenting me with her smartphone, where an advert for a snazzy little instamatic camera was displayed. It had popped up a few seconds earlier, when she’d logged on to Instagram.
She met my quizzical ‘so what?’ face with exasperation.
‘What were we talking about? Just now? In the street, down there?’ she said.
Picture perfect: Jen Lewis (left) and the alarmingly similar advert sent on Facebook shortly after +5
Picture perfect: Jen Lewis (left) and the alarmingly similar advert sent on Facebook shortly after
Sure enough, we’d been window shopping before our lunch reservation, and spotted a little gadget shop. I remembered Lois had commented on the instamatic cameras on display (dropping a few hints for her forthcoming 21st birthday, I suspected).
We’d had a brief conversation about how they were all the rage in the Eighties, and how one of my memories of Christmas parties at my parents’ house was listening to that familiar ‘whirrr’ and watching the wealthier guests flapping about the instant photos, as everyone waited for them to dry.
RELATED ARTICLES
Previous
1
2
Next
She's aging backwards! Pettifleur Berenger unveils her...
'Pokemon Go' gets real: Niantic reveals new version of hit...
Mystery of the gigantic snake-like cosmic filament found...
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Share
They were the selfies of their day, and good fun (if you could afford the camera film). How lovely that they were making a comeback, I commented. And we moved on.
Then, less than 20 minutes later, an advert popped up on Lois’s phone, for the exact same product. Same colour, same model, same everything.
‘They’re listening, they’re watching,’ she said.
‘Oh don’t be daft,’ I replied. ‘Who’s listening? Who’d want to listen to us?’
‘I’m serious,’ said Lois. ‘This keeps happening. This is no coincidence. Someone is listening to our conversations. Advertisers. They’re listening via our phones’ microphones.’
Our activity on websites and apps and demographic information is gathered using increasingly sophisticated technology to bring us personalised adverts (stock image) +5
Our activity on websites and apps and demographic information is gathered using increasingly sophisticated technology to bring us personalised adverts (stock image)
A little melodramatic and paranoid, you might think. I certainly did. I assumed Lois had simply been researching the product online before we flew to New York, and had forgotten.
We all know ‘targeted advertising’ has been prevalent for some years now, via our social media apps and search engines. Facebook was one of the first to introduce it four years ago. It’s no big secret: go on the John Lewis website and choose a blouse, or Google Nigella’s smart eye-level oven, and the next time you log on to Facebook or Instagram, there’s a good chance they’ll pop up as adverts there.
While it felt a little uncomfortable and intrusive to begin with, we’ve all sort of got used to it.
Our activity on websites and apps and demographic information is gathered using increasingly sophisticated technology to bring us personalised adverts.
People’s electronic markers — known as ‘cookies’ — from websites they visit are gathered and passed to advertisers so they can target us with products relevant to our tastes and interests (and ones we’re more likely to buy).
Facebook categorically denies it uses smartphone microphones to gather information for the purposes of targeted advertising +5
Facebook categorically denies it uses smartphone microphones to gather information for the purposes of targeted advertising
It is not illegal. Although under the Data Protection Act 1998, a person has to actively consent to their data being collected and the purpose for which it’s used, few people actually take time to police what they consent to.
The terms and conditions and privacy statements you sign up to when you buy a smartphone or download an app are rarely scrutinised before we tick the box and wade in.
But Lois swore she hadn’t Googled an instamatic camera. That was the first time she’d ever had a conversation about them. ‘I’m telling you, they’re listening,’ she said, and I admit I stuffed my own phone a little deeper into my bag. Could she be right?
Well, hundreds of other people seem to think so. Stories on Twitter of these ‘blind coincidence’ adverts are abundant.
And not just restricted to voice snooping either — some are convinced their phones are spying on them via their cameras, too.
Last month, a creepy story swept social media about an American woman called Jen Lewis who was shown an advert on Facebook for a bra — featuring a model wearing exactly the same clothes she was wearing at that moment. The same pink shirt and skinny jeans.
Lewis, a writer and designer, recreated the model’s pose and posted the near-identical pictures side-by-side on Twitter where they went viral with more than 20,000 likes.
While Facebook insisted the ad was a coincidence, hundreds of horrified social media users commented — many suggesting the ad could have been targeted with image recognition software, using Jen’s laptop or smartphone camera as a spy window into her life. ‘Seriously, cover up your camera lens,’ warned one, as stories were swapped of people receiving adverts for wedding planners, minutes after popping the question, and cat food after merely discussing whether to buy a cat.
People’s electronic markers — known as ‘cookies’ — from websites they visit are gathered and passed to advertisers so they can target us with products relevant to our tastes (stock image) +5
People’s electronic markers — known as ‘cookies’ — from websites they visit are gathered and passed to advertisers so they can target us with products relevant to our tastes (stock image)
One Facebook user is so convinced his conversations are being monitored that he switched off the microphone on his smartphone — and, sure enough, there haven’t been any more ‘strange coincidences’ since.
Tom Crewe, 28, a marketing manager from Bournemouth, was immediately suspicious in March when he noticed an advert on Facebook for beard transplant surgery. Only hours earlier he’d joked with a colleague about them both getting one, as they remained smooth-faced, despite their age.
‘I had my phone’s Facebook app switched on at the time. Within a few hours, an ad came through for hair and beard transplants,’ he says.
‘I just thought: “Why have I been targeted?” I’d never Googled “hair or beard transplants” or sent an email to anyone about it or talked about it on Facebook.’
The fact that the ad for beard transplants was so unusual and specific made him suspect his phone had been eavesdropping.
He became convinced when later that month he received an advert to his phone — again weirdly and quite specifically — for Peperami sausages.
Companies have developed algorithms that can look for patterns and determine potentially useful things about your behaviour and interests (stock image) +5
Companies have developed algorithms that can look for patterns and determine potentially useful things about your behaviour and interests (stock image)
‘Again, it was a casual conversation in the office. I’d just eaten a Peperami, and it was a few hours before lunch, and a colleague joked how he didn’t think this was a particularly good thing to have for breakfast.
‘Again, I’d never Googled the product or mentioned it on Facebook or anywhere online. It’s just something I buy during my twice-a-week shop at Tesco.
‘Then I get an advert for it. This happened within two weeks of the beard incident.’
It so disturbed him that he researched it and saw others talking about it.
‘I saw articles and got information and turned off the Facebook app’s access to my phone’s microphone. I’ve not noticed it happening since then.’
Facebook categorically denies it uses smartphone microphones to gather information for the purposes of targeted advertising.
A spokesperson said being targeted with an advert for a beard transplant was just an example of heightened perception, or the phenomenon whereby people notice things they’ve talked about.
With 1.7 billion users being served tens of adverts a day, there’s always going to be something uncanny. Google and WhatsApp also categorically deny bugging private conversations, describing the anecdotal evidence as pure coincidence.
One thing technology experts agree on, though, is that the ability to create technology that can randomly sweep millions of conversations for repeated phrases or identifiable names, definitely exists.
Companies have developed algorithms that can look for patterns and determine potentially useful things about your behaviour and interests. Whether they are being used by the companies with access to your phone, however, remains unproven.
Not convinced? Consider the Siri or Google Assistant functions, designed to understand your voice and pick out key phrases, and with a huge vocabulary in their grasp.
I saw articles and got information and turned off the Facebook app’s access to my phone’s microphone. I’ve not noticed it happening since then
It’s not too big a stretch to think of this technology developed to sweep conversations as a marketing tool. ‘Smartphones are small tracking devices,’ says Michelle De Mooy, acting director for the U.S.’s Democracy and Technology Privacy and Data project.
‘We may not think of them like that because they’re very personal devices — they travel with us, they sleep next to us. But they are, in fact, collectors of a vast amount of information including audio information. When you are using a free service, you are basically paying for it with information.’
As yet, however, there’s no concrete evidence that we are being listened to. Any complaints about spying would be dealt with by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which handles legislation governing how personal information is stored and shared across the UK.
They say no one has complained officially. Tales of cybersnooping haven’t gone beyond ‘shaggy dog stories’ on Twitter and Facebook.
When approached by the Mail, an ICO spokesman said: ‘We haven’t received any complaints on the issue of Facebook listening to people’s conversations.
‘Businesses and organisations operating in the UK are required by law to process personal data fairly and lawfully, this means being clear and open with individuals about how information will be used.’
That law, however, is struggling to keep up with technology, according to Ewa Luger, a researcher and specialist in the ethical design of intelligent machines, at the University of Edinburgh. ‘I think this is a problem ethically,’ she says. ‘If I had an expectation that this application was recording what I was saying, that’s one thing, but if I don’t, then it’s ethically questionable. I may be having private conversations and taking my phone into the bathroom.
‘This is a new area of research — voice assistance technology. We have only been looking at this for 12 months. It takes a while for research to catch up.’
In the meantime, Lois and I have turned off our microphones. It’s easy to do via your phone’s Settings.
To be honest, I don’t think there are people with earphones in a bunker, desperate to know what car I’m thinking of buying, but I’d rather, in this increasingly public world, maintain a bit of privacy. You really don’t know who’s listening.
■ Additional reporting Stephanie Condron
-
China
Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life
The government has turned the remote region into a laboratory for its high-tech social controls
Pedestrians pass a “convenience police station” in the Erdaoqiao neighborhood of Urumqi.
by Josh Chin and Giulia Marchi for The Wall Street Journal
Updated Dec. 19, 2017 10:58 p.m. ET
Pedestrians pass a “convenience police station” in the Erdaoqiao neighborhood of Urumqi.
URUMQI, China—This city on China’s Central Asia frontier may be one of the most closely surveilled places on earth.
Security checkpoints with identification scanners guard the train station and roads in and out of town. Facial scanners track comings and goings at hotels, shopping malls and banks. Police use hand-held devices to search smartphones for encrypted chat apps, politically charged videos and other suspect content. To fill up with gas, drivers must first swipe their ID cards and stare into a camera.
China’s efforts to snuff out a violent separatist movement by some members of the predominantly Muslim Uighur ethnic group have turned the autonomous region of Xinjiang, of which Urumqi is the capital, into a laboratory for high-tech social controls that civil-liberties activists say the government wants to roll out across the country.
It is nearly impossible to move about the region without feeling the unrelenting gaze of the government. Citizens and visitors alike must run a daily gantlet of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras and machines scanning their ID cards, faces, eyeballs and sometimes entire bodies.
Life Inside China’s Total Surveillance State
China has turned the northwestern region of Xinjiang into a vast experiment in domestic surveillance. WSJ investigated what life is like in a place where one's every move can be monitored with cutting-edge technology.
.
When fruit vendor Parhat Imin swiped his card at a telecommunications office this summer to pay an overdue phone bill, his photo popped up with an “X.” Since then, he says, every scan of his ID card sets off an alarm. He isn’t sure what it signifies, but figures he is on some kind of government watch list because he is a Uighur and has had intermittent run-ins with the police.
He says he is reluctant to travel for fear of being detained. “They blacklisted me,” he says. “I can’t go anywhere.”
All across China, authorities are rolling out new technology to keep watch over people and shape their behavior. Controls on expression have tightened under President Xi Jinping, and the state’s vast security web now includes high-tech equipment to monitor online activity and even snoop in smartphone messaging apps.
China’s government has been on high alert since a surge in deadly terrorist attacks around the country in 2014 that authorities blamed on Xinjiang-based militants inspired by extremist Islamic messages from abroad. Now officials are putting the world’s most state-of-the-art tools in the hands of a ramped-up security force to create a system of social control in Xinjiang—one that falls heaviest on Uighurs.
At a security exposition in October, an executive of Guangzhou-based CloudWalk Technology Co., which has sold facial-recognition algorithms to police and identity-verification systems to gas stations in Xinjiang, called the region the world’s most heavily guarded place. According to the executive, Jiang Jun, for every 100,000 people the police in Xinjiang want to monitor, they use the same amount of surveillance equipment that police in other parts of China would use to monitor millions.
Authorities in Xinjiang declined to respond to questions about surveillance. Top party officials from Xinjiang said at a Communist Party gathering in Beijing in October that “social stability and long-term security” were the local government’s bottom-line goals.
Chinese and foreign civil-liberty activists say the surveillance in this northwestern corner of China offers a preview of what is to come nationwide.
"A woman undergoes a facial-recognition check at a luxury mall in Urumqi."
.
“They constantly take lessons from the high-pressure rule they apply in Xinjiang and implement them in the east,” says Zhu Shengwu, a Chinese human-rights lawyer who has worked on surveillance cases. “What happens in Xinjiang has bearing on the fate of all Chinese people.”
During an October road trip into Xinjiang along a modern highway, two Wall Street Journal reporters encountered a succession of checkpoints that turned the ride into a strange and tense journey.
At Xingxing Gorge, a windswept pass used centuries ago by merchants plying the Silk Road, police inspected incoming traffic and verified travelers’ identities. The Journal reporters were stopped, ordered out of their car and asked to explain the purpose of their visit. Drivers, mostly those who weren’t Han Chinese, were guided through electronic gateways that scanned their ID cards and faces.
Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life
Farther along, at the entrance to Hami, a city of a half-million, police had the Journal reporters wait in front of a bank of TV screens showing feeds from nearby surveillance cameras while recording their passport numbers.
Surveillance cameras loomed every few hundred feet along the road into town, blanketed street corners and kept watch on patrons of a small noodle shop near the main mosque. The proprietress, a member of the Muslim Hui minority, said the government ordered all restaurants in the area to install the devices earlier this year “to prevent terrorist attacks.”
Days later, as the Journal reporters were driving on a dirt road in Shanshan county after being ordered by officials to leave a nearby town, a police cruiser materialized seemingly from nowhere. It raced past, then skidded to a diagonal stop, kicking up a cloud of dust and blocking the reporters’ car. An SUV pulled up behind. A half-dozen police ordered the reporters out of the car and demanded their passports.
An officer explained that surveillance cameras had read the out-of-town license plates and sent out an alert. “We check every car that’s not from Xinjiang,” he said. The police then escorted the reporters to the highway.
"A security camera has been erected next to the minarets of a mosque in the Uighur village of Tuyugou."
.
At checkpoints further west, iris and body scanners are added to the security arsenal.
Darren Byler, an anthropology researcher at the University of Washington who spent two years in Xinjiang studying migration, says the closest contemporary parallel can be found in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where the Israeli government has created a system of checkpoints and biometric surveillance to keep tabs on Palestinians.
In Erdaoqiao, the neighborhood where the fruit vendor Mr. Imin lives, small booths known as “convenience police stations,” marked by flashing lights atop a pole, appear every couple of hundred yards. The police stationed there offer water, cellphone charging and other services, while also taking in feeds from nearby surveillance cameras.
Always Watching
In Xinjiang, China's government has put the world's most state-of-the-art surveillance tools in the hands of security forces.
License-plate camera
Used to track vehicles breaking law, on watch list or from outside Xinjiang
Iris scanner
ID technology used at some checkpoints.
Location tracker
Mandatory in all
commercial vehicles.
Voice-pattern analyzer
Can identify people by speech patterns.
Smartphone
scanner
Searches for encrypted chat apps and other suspect content.
ID scanner
Used to check identification cards.
QR code
Knife
Includes ID number and other personal information
Buyer identification information is marked by laser on blade.
Sources: Government procurement orders; iFlyTek Co.; Meiya Pico Information Co; Darren Byler, University of Washington; Human Rights Watch; police interviews; interviews with Uighurs in exile.
.
Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life
Young Uighur men are routinely pulled into the stations for phone checks, leading some to keep two devices—one for home use and another, with no sensitive content or apps, for going out, according to Uighur exiles.
Erdaoqiao, the heart of Uighur culture and commerce in Urumqi, is where ethnic riots started in 2009 that resulted in numerous deaths. The front entrance to Erdaoqiao Mosque is now closed, as are most entries to the International Grand Bazaar. Visitors funnel through a heavily guarded main gate. The faces and ID cards of Xinjiang residents are scanned. An array of cameras keeps watch.
After the riots, authorities showed up to shut down the shop Mr. Imin was running at the time, which sold clothing and religious items. When he protested, he says, they clubbed him on the back of the head, which has left him walking with a limp. They jailed him for six months for obstructing official business, he says. Other jail stints followed, including eight months for buying hashish.
The police in Urumqi didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Imin now sells fruit and freshly squeezed pomegranate juice from a cart. He worries that his flagged ID card will bring the police again. Recently remarried, he hasn’t dared visit his new wife’s family in southern Xinjiang.
.
At a checkpoint in Kashgar, passengers get their ID cards and faces scanned while police officers check cars and drivers.
Chinese rulers have struggled for two millennia to control Xinjiang, whose 23 million people are scattered over an expanse twice the size of Texas. Beijing sees it as a vital piece of President Xi’s trillion-dollar “Belt and Road” initiative to build infrastructure along the old Silk Road trade routes to Europe.
Last year, Mr. Xi installed a new Xinjiang party chief, Chen Quanguo, who previously handled ethnic strife in Tibet, another hot spot. Mr. Chen pioneered the convenience police stations in that region, partly in response to a string of self-immolations by monks protesting Chinese rule.
Surveillance Economy
The value of security-related investment projects in Xinjiang is soaring.
8 billion yuan
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
2015
2016
2017*
*January-March
Source: Industrial Securities Co.
.
Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life
Under Mr. Chen, the police presence in Xinjiang has skyrocketed, based on data showing exponential increases in police-recruitment advertising. Local police departments last year began ordering cameras capable of creating three-dimensional face images as well as DNA sequencers and voice-pattern analysis systems, according to government procurement documents uncovered by Human Rights Watch and reviewed by the Journal.
During the first quarter of 2017, the government announced the equivalent of more than $1 billion in security-related investment projects in Xinjiang, up from $27 million in all of 2015, according to research in April by Chinese brokerage firm Industrial Securities .
Police Officers Wanted
Advertisements for policing positions in Xinjiang have risen sharply.
Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life
Government procurement orders show millions spent on “unified combat platforms”—computer systems to analyze surveillance data from police and other government agencies.
Tahir Hamut, a Uighur poet and filmmaker, says Uighurs who had passports were called in to local police stations in May. He worried he would draw extra scrutiny for having been accused of carrying sensitive documents, including newspaper articles about Uighur separatist attacks, while trying to travel to Turkey to study in the mid-1990s. The aborted trip landed him in a labor camp for three years, he says.
He and his wife lined up at a police station with other Uighurs to have their fingerprints and blood samples taken. He says he was asked to read a newspaper for two minutes while police recorded his voice, and to turn his head slowly in front of a camera.
.
Later, his family’s passports were confiscated. After a friend was detained by police, he says, he assumed he also would be taken away. He says he paid officials a bribe of more than $9,000 to get the passports back, making up a story that his daughter had epilepsy requiring treatment in the U.S. Xinjiang’s Public Security Bureau, which is in charge of the region’s police forces, didn’t respond to a request for comment about the bribery.
“The day we left, I was filled with anxiety,” he says. “I worried what would happen if we were stopped going through security at the Urumqi airport, or going through border control in Beijing.”
He and his family made it to Virginia, where they have applied for political asylum.
Annotations in red added by The Wall Street Journal. Notes: * Xinjiang considers it suspicious for Uighurs to visit a list of 26 mostly Muslim countries, including Turkey, Egypt, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. ** “Persons of interest” refers to people on the police watch list; “special population” is a common euphemism for Uighurs seen as separatists risks. Sources: Tahir Hamut (provided the form), Uighur Istiqlal TV and Adrian Zenz (confirmation of 26-country list).
Chinese authorities use forms to collect personal information from Uighurs. One form reviewed by the Journal asks about respondents’ prayer habits and if they have contacts abroad. There are sections for officials to rate “persons of interest” on a six-point scale and check boxes on whether they are “safe,” “average” or “unsafe.”
China Communications Services Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of state telecom giant China Telecom , has signed contracts this year worth more than $38 million to provide mosque surveillance and install surveillance-data platforms in Xinjiang, according to government procurement documents. The company declined to discuss the contracts, saying they constituted sensitive business information.
Xiamen Meiya Pico Information Co. Ltd. worked with police in Urumqi to adapt a hand-held device it sells for investigating economic crimes so it can scan smartphones for terrorism-related content.
A description of the device that recently was removed from the company’s website said it can read the files on 90% of smartphones and check findings against a police antiterror database. “Mostly, you’re looking for audio and video,” said Zhang Xuefeng, Meiya Pico’s chief marketing officer, in an interview.
Inside China’s Surveillance State
Surveillance Cameras Made by China Are Hanging All Over the U.S.
China’s All-Seeing Surveillance State Is Reading Its Citizens’ Faces
China’s Tech Giants Have a Second Job: Helping Beijing Spy on Its People
Jailed for a Text: China’s Censors Are Spying on Mobile Chat Groups
.
Near the Xinjiang University campus in Urumqi, police sat at a wooden table recently, ordering some people walking by to hand over their phones.
“You just plug it in and it shows you what’s on the phone,” said one officer, brandishing a device similar to the one on Meiya Pico’s website. He declined to say what content they were checking for.
One recent afternoon in Korla, one of Xinjiang’s largest cities, only a trickle of people passed through the security checkpoint at the local bazaar, where vendors stared at darkened hallways empty of shoppers.
Li Qiang, the Han Chinese owner of a wine shop, said the security checks, while necessary for safety, were getting in the way of commerce. “As soon as you go out, they check your ID,” he said.
"Shopkeepers perform an antiterrorism drill under police supervision outside the bazaar in Kashgar."
.
Authorities have built a network of detention facilities, officially referred to as education centers, across Xinjiang. In April, the official Xinjiang Daily newspaper said more than 2,000 people had been sent to a “study and training center” in the southern city of Hotan.
One new compound sits a half-hour drive south of Kashgar, a Uighur-dominated city near the border with Kyrgyzstan. It is surrounded by imposing walls topped with razor wire, with watchtowers at two corners. A slogan painted on the wall reads: “All ethnic groups should be like the pods of a pomegranate, tightly wrapped together.”
Villagers describe it as a detention center. A man standing near the entrance one recent night said it was a school and advised reporters to leave.
Mr. Hamut, the poet, says a relative in Kashgar was taken to a detention center after she participated in an Islamic ceremony, and another went missing soon after the family tried to call him from the U.S.
The local government in Kashgar didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Police officers at a gate in the Old City of Kashgar.
.
Surveillance in and around Kashgar, where Han Chinese make up less than 7% of the population, is even tighter than in Urumqi. Drivers entering the city are screened intensively. A machine scans each driver’s face. Police officers inspect the engine and the trunk. Passengers must get out and run their bags through X-ray machines.
In Aksu, a dusty city a five-hour drive east of Kashgar, knife salesman Jiang Qiankun says his shop had to pay thousands of dollars for a machine that turns a customer’s ID card number, photo, ethnicity and address into a QR code that it lasers into the blade of any knife it sells. “If someone has a knife, it has to have their ID card information,” he says.
On the last day the Journal reporters were in Xinjiang, an unmarked car trailed them on a 5 a.m. drive to the Urumqi airport. During their China Southern Airlines flight to Beijing, a flight attendant appeared to train a police-style body camera attached to his belt on the reporters. Later, as passengers were disembarking, the attendant denied filming them, saying it was common for airline crew to wear the cameras as a security measure.
China Southern says the crew member was an air marshal, charged with safety on board.
—Fan Wenxin, Jeremy Page, Kersten Zhang and Eva Dou contributed to this article.
-
So, I like many people have a Netflix account. I had the movie "Bright" saved to watch when I could. I finally did get the chance to watch it at a relative's home. It was through their Netflix account. Their home is hundreds of miles away from mine. I don't have a Netflix app on any cell phone or tablet. I never logged into my Netflix account at that location.
So, when I returned home, "Bright" is now on my Netflix account under the category of "watch it again".
Trying to figure out how that happened.
I guess we are all living in a "Black Mirror" episode now.
-
GM,
did you pay for the film with a credit card
for certain out credit card transactions are being sold . as I notice I might order something then see pop up on my computer within a day for same thing.
I have learned from having to question the motives of everything and look over my shoulder at everyone that coincidences do happen but also we are being screwed as well
with the data mining.
-
GM,
did you pay for the film with a credit card
for certain out credit card transactions are being sold . as I notice I might order something then see pop up on my computer within a day for same thing.
I have learned from having to question the motives of everything and look over my shoulder at everyone that coincidences do happen but also we are being screwed as well
with the data mining.
No credit card transaction involved. I just selected the movie and watched it. I wonder if my cellphone was tracked using the wifi. Unsure at this time.
-
How about through Facebook? That would connect you to your relative and maybe "likes and dislikes".
I presume Zucker shit would deny it - while doing it.
-
How about through Facebook? That would connect you to your relative and maybe "likes and dislikes".
I presume Zucker shit would deny it - while doing it.
I don't have Facebook as an app on any device.
-
Somehow netflix knew you were at your relatives house and saw the movie there
How could it have know that?
Like you said you are tracked via mobile device
or facial recognition
There may be embedded programs to detect these things.
I remember how MSFT had ways to detect or control the use of their software in devices to stop pirating . :|
-
I'm pretty sure it's by tracking the presence of devices connected to WiFi at the time the movie is played.
-
I'm pretty sure it's by tracking the presence of devices connected to WiFi at the time the movie is played.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/2925590/microsoft-subnet/smartphone-location-tracking-via-wi-fi-signals-and-via-motion-sensors-for-subway-riders.html
-
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-echo-wiretap-hack/
The wiretap device can be used as a wiretap.
Be sure to put one in your home.
-
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/100000005704904.app.html?emc=edit_ta_20180127&nl=top-stories&nlid=49641193&ref=cta
-
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/07/tucker-google-spy-on-phone/
In Soviet Union, KGB listen to phone. In Soviet Amerika, spy IS phone.
-
http://dailysignal.com/2018/02/14/lack-candor-cited-surveillance-requests-obama-administration/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell%22&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWmpZd05EUm1OV0kzWkdNdyIsInQiOiJNcHNUMkszYXlNMlVPUm11RFNvTlBEbXpuTWlQSmw5VjUyYTVUTitJWjNnZlFwaTBhZEl3ZlI1Z2lDQWwrZ1d1OGh2bVRaRGlEZHBoTDU0WFF6bE0rWFlQS3NrQk5cL01jaGIyNjBHN2tjQmdvVVVSZ29VM0JZOVNlaWJpOW1TdngifQ%3D%3D#dear_reader
-
Apple to Start Putting Sensitive Encryption Keys in China
Codes for Chinese users of iCloud will be kept in a secure location, company says
By Robert McMillan and
Tripp Mickle
Feb. 24, 2018 1:39 p.m. ET
18 COMMENTS
When Apple Inc. AAPL 1.74% next week begins shifting the iCloud accounts of its China-based customers to a local partner’s servers, it also will take an unprecedented step for the company that alarms some privacy specialists: storing the encryption keys for those accounts in China.
The keys are complex strings of random characters that can unlock the photos, notes and messages that users store in iCloud. Until now, Apple has stored the codes only in the U.S. for all global users, the company said, in keeping with its emphasis on customer privacy and security.
While Apple says it will ensure that the keys are protected in China, some privacy experts and former Apple security employees worry that moving the keys to China makes them more vulnerable to seizure by a government with a record of censorship and political suppression.
“Once the keys are there, they can’t necessarily pull out and take those keys because the server could be seized by the Chinese government,” said Matthew Green, a professor of cryptography at Johns Hopkins University. Ultimately, he says, “It means that Apple can’t say no.”
Apple says it is moving the keys to China as part of its effort to comply with a Chinese law on data storage enacted last year. Apple said it will store the keys in a secure location, retain control over them and hasn’t created any backdoors to access customer data. A spokesman in a statement added that Apple advocated against the new laws, but chose to comply because it “felt that discontinuing the [iCloud] service would result in a bad user experience and less data security and privacy for our Chinese customers.”
Apple’s move reflects the tough choice that has faced all foreign companies that want to continue offering cloud services in China since the new law. Other companies also have complied, including Microsoft Corp. for its Azure and Office 365 services, which are operated by 21Vianet Group , Inc., and Amazon.com Inc., which has cloud operating agreements with Beijing Sinnet Technology Co. and Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology Co.
Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, which serve businesses in China, declined to say where encryption keys will be stored for businesses using their security tools there.
Privacy specialists are especially interested in Apple because of its enormous customer base and its history of championing customer privacy. Apple in 2016 fought a U.S. government demand to help unlock the iPhone of the gunman in the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack. “For many years, we have used encryption to protect our customers’ personal data because we believe it’s the only way to keep their information safe,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said then in a letter to customers explaining its decision.
Apple said it will provide data only in response to requests initiated by Chinese authorities that the company deems lawful and said it won’t respond to bulk data requests. In the first half of 2017, Apple received 1,273 requests for data from Chinese authorities covering more than 10,000 devices, according to its transparency report. Apple said it provided data for all but 14% of those requests.
Greater China is Apple’s second-most-important market after the U.S., with $44.76 billion in revenue in its last fiscal year, a fifth of the total. Some previous steps to comply with Chinese laws have been controversial, including removing apps from its China store for virtual private networks that can circumvent government blocks on websites. Apple has said it follows the law wherever it operates and hopes that the restrictions around communication in China are eventually loosened.
Jingzhou Tao, a Beijing-based attorney at Dechert LLP, said Chinese iPhone users are disappointed by Apple’s changes to iCloud data storage because privacy protection in China is weak. However, he said users there “still consider that iPhone is better than some other pure Chinese-made phones for privacy policy and protection.”
Apple’s cloud partner in China is Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data Industry Co., or Guizhou-Cloud, which is overseen by the government of Guizhou province. Apple plans to shift operational responsibility for all iCloud data for Chinese customers in China to Guizhou-Cloud by Feb. 28. Customer data will migrate to servers based in China over the course of the next two years. The company declined to say when the encryption keys would move to China.
Apple began notifying iCloud users in China last month that Guizhou-Cloud would be responsible for storing their data.
Updated terms and conditions for China users say that Apple and Guizhou-Cloud “will have access to all data” and “the right to share, exchange and disclose all user data, including content, to and between each other under applicable law.”
“Given that Apple’s China operations will be managed by a Chinese company, it seems implausible that the government will not have access to Apple data through the local company,” said Ronald Deibert, a political-science professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs who has researched Chinese government hacking operations.
Guizhou-Cloud and the Chinese cybersecurity administration didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reporters Without Borders has urged journalists in China to change their geographic region or close their accounts before Feb. 28, saying Chinese authorities could gain a backdoor to user data even if Apple says it won’t provide one.
Apple said it has advised Chinese customers that they can opt out of iCloud service to avoid having their data stored in China. Data for China-based users whose settings are configured for another country, or for Hong Kong and Macau, won’t go on Chinese servers, and Apple said it won’t transfer anyone’s data until they accept the new mainland-China terms of service.
Mr. Green and others say Apple should provide more technical details on its steps to secure its encryption keys and internet usage data that might be available on Guizhou-Cloud.
This usage information, called metadata, could tell Chinese authorities the identity of users who download a book or other files of interest to the government, said Joe Gross, a consultant on building data centers.
“You can tell whether people are uploading or downloading things,” he said “You can tell where they are. You may be able to tell whether they’re sharing things.”
Apple said there would need to be a legal request to obtain metadata.
—Yoko Kubota, Jay Greene and Xiao Xiao contributed to this article
-
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-really-is-spying-on-you-just-not-through-your-phones-mic-1520448644?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=video&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s
-
A simple law—‘Users own their private data’
- WSJ opinion today
It reminds me that I bragged during the 1700 page NAFTA debate that I could write a free trade agreement on one side of a cocktail napkin.
What happened to clear thinking like, "unalienable Rights"?
-
If we in the medical field sold patient data for a profit you know where we would be.
I've never been in a jumpsuit.
Maybe Zuck could promote the first jailhouse division of FB.
-
If we in the medical field sold patient data for a profit you know where we would be.
I've never been in a jumpsuit.
Maybe Zuck could promote the first jailhouse division of FB.
The medical industry collects our private information including ss nos. and hackers do the selling.
----
Any recommendations anyone for a site that respects privacy to replace facebook?
-
If we in the medical field sold patient data for a profit you know where we would be.
I've never been in a jumpsuit.
Maybe Zuck could promote the first jailhouse division of FB.
The medical industry collects our private information including ss nos. and hackers do the selling.
----
Any recommendations anyone for a site that respects privacy to replace facebook?
What are you using Facehugger for?
-
What are you using Facehugger for?
I'm not on FB but once in a while I miss something I would like to see.
It was no victory staying out of FB; I lost all my privacy to Google. I appreciate the recent post on how to avoid giving everything to these places but they already have quite a bit and, like FB users, I find myself liking their 'free' features.
On the positive side, law enforcement brought sway teams to my rental house last summer, broke the doors and windows all the way up to the third floor attic at dawn and arrested a murderer sleeping with my unknowing tenant. She was taken too but released. I thought quite a while about how even this thug's friends and family would know where his girlfriend lived and realized they didn't need to. Google knows. Police just got (court order I presume) access to his cellphone and came right over with guns drawn. They probably knew which room he was in, even which side of the bed depending on GPS accuracy.
-
What are you using Facehugger for?
I'm not on FB but once in a while I miss something I would like to see.
It was no victory staying out of FB; I lost all my privacy to Google. I appreciate the recent post on how to avoid giving everything to these places but they already have quite a bit and, like FB users, I find myself liking their 'free' features.
On the positive side, law enforcement brought sway teams to my rental house last summer, broke the doors and windows all the way up to the third floor attic at dawn and arrested a murderer sleeping with my unknowing tenant. She was taken too but released. I thought quite a while about how even this thug's friends and family would know where his girlfriend lived and realized they didn't need to. Google knows. Police just got (court order I presume) access to his cellphone and came right over with guns drawn. They probably knew which room he was in, even which side of the bed depending on GPS accuracy.
Not quite that accurate, but that is a viable investigative option.
You can create a Doug MacG using an alternative ID.
1. Buy a prepaid cell phone with cash from a big box store.
2. Use the number to create a Facehugger account. Keep in mind that Facehugger will collect the MAC address and IP address from every device you use to access it, as well as browser information and cookies. Do not use your own phone for Facehugger access.
-
"What are you using Facehugger for?"
I am not on it. Never was. Some in my family avoid it and some love it to stay in close touch to family members
I guess they don't care that Zuck, and co., and customers are also part of the family.
Probably the intelligence deep state and maybe the DNC too.
-
See my entries today on the Goolag thread.
-
See my entries today on the Goolag thread.
From the article:
"In 2016, the European Union passed the
comprehensive General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The details
of the law are far too complex to explain here, but some of the things
it mandates are that personal data of EU citizens can only be collected
and saved for "specific, explicit, and legitimate purposes," and only
with explicit consent of the user. Consent can't be buried in the terms
and conditions, nor can it be assumed unless the user opts in."
It's not very often that Europe is ahead of us in something good or that I want more government involvement in business but looks very good to me. In my view, we need to declare our rights -that we own our information, not create new agencies, departments and complicated frameworks.
If you give permission to someone to drive your car, that person cannot give permission to someone else to drive your car. AThis is a simple concept in law and lnsurance liability. Isn't your SS# and DOB just as valuable?
-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/20/sonia-sotomayor-opposition-evidence-unlawful-stops-police-crime-law
-
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2018/04/our-genes-gateway-to-health-and-to.html
-
https://nypost.com/2018/04/21/obama-bureaucracy-left-our-private-data-more-vulnerable-than-ever/
Obama bureaucracy left our private data more vulnerable than ever
By Paul Sperry April 21, 2018 | 9:51am |
Obama bureaucracy left our private data more vulnerable than ever
As it overhauled banking, the feds launched a massive data collection effort.
Without your knowledge or permission, the Obama administration collected and warehoused your most private bank records and continued to sweep them up — despite repeated warnings the data wasn’t being properly protected. Now there’s a good chance your personal information could be in the hands of identity thieves or even terrorists.
The government isn’t sure who has your information. It only knows the Obama-era databases have been breached by outsider threats potentially 1,000-plus times. That’s according to a recent investigation of cyber-intrusions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where the sensitive information is stored.
The number of confirmed breaches of consumers’ personally identifiable information is “just north of 200,” revealed Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget chief who took control of the CFPB late last year, in testimony to Congress. “We think there’s another 800 [incidents of hacked information] that we suspect might have been lost, but we haven’t been able to nail that down.”
In fact, the bureau has suffered 233 confirmed hack attacks and another 840 suspected hacks, putting at risk the financial information and other personal data — including Social Security numbers and birthdates — of potentially millions of Americans.
Most people don’t know this, but after President Barack Obama created the CFPB, he had the powerful regulatory agency snoop into virtually every financial account held by Americans to assemble a massive and secret government database as part of the post-financial crisis overhaul of the banking industry.
Without asking if customers wanted to opt in, CFPB has collected and stockpiled from banks more than 600 million credit-card accounts and personal data from millions of home, auto, business and student loans.
For the first time, the government vacuumed up extremely sensitive personal finance information that even the IRS doesn’t collect — including credit scores, performance data on loans, telephone numbers, employment records, even your race and ethnicity, in addition to your date of birth, Social Security number and address. At last count, the CFPB had 12 consumer data-mining programs running.
The main purpose of the databases was to find “statistical patterns” of unfair or racially discriminatory lending to help make cases of bias against private lenders and credit agencies.
CFPB maintained in regulatory notices buried in the Federal Register that all this personal information would be safely stored in “locked file rooms, locked file cabinets” inside a building with “security cameras” and 24-hour security guards and that the computerized records would be “safeguarded through use of access codes.”
But it turns out the agency also shared the codes and files with outside agencies and contractors, including state attorneys general, trial lawyers and civil-rights organizations interested in filing class-action lawsuits against banks, according to regulatory documents and congressional testimony.
In 2015, the bureau’s inspector general warned that sharing the massive databases with outside contractors and storing sensitive private information on unsecured data clouds made the data vulnerable to hacking, identity theft and fraud.
I am very much concerned about the privacy of that data, about the use of that data
- Mick Mulvaney
Among other things, inspector general Mark Bialek found that CFPB failed to ensure that the data it was collecting on credit-card accounts and loans followed new cyber-security safeguards in the wake of the massive hacking of the US Office of Personnel Management by the Chinese, which compromised the personal information — including fingerprints — of current and former federal employees. He also found that the bureau was using an “outdated encryption mechanism to secure remote access to its information technology infrastructure.”
“CFPB has not yet fully implemented a number of privacy-control steps and information-security practices,” warned Bialek in a 10-page memo to then-CFPB Director Richard Cordray.
Also, the agency failed to perform background checks on outside contractors with “privileged access” to the computer system and databases, nor had it adequately trained employees to avoid falling for e-mail “phishing” scams that hackers use to break into government computer systems, Bialek further warned in 2017.
But the warnings largely fell on deaf ears. The full extent of the security breaches were only uncovered and disclosed after the Trump administration recently took over the agency, which Obama made sure would be shielded from congressional oversight and audit. The new director testified that “everything” the agency keeps on file is subject to being obtained by malicious third parties.
“I am very much concerned about the privacy of that data, about the use of that data,” Mulvaney testified earlier this month before the Senate Banking Committee. “I am not satisfied with the data security right now in the bureau.”
He says he has put a “data collection freeze” into effect to stop the automatic electronic transfer of bank records to the government until “we fix our systems.” Meanwhile, he is working with the Defense Department to “test our vulnerabilities.”
Even now, it’s unclear who has your data. But one thing is for sure: These breaches demand an independent audit and criminal investigation to fully assess the damage to consumer privacy. Until then, CFPB clearly cannot be trusted to gather and handle any more data that’s personally identifiable.
Paul Sperry is a former Hoover Institution media fellow and author of the bestseller “Infiltration.”
-
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/health/dna-privacy-golden-state-killer-genealogy.html?nl=top-stories&nlid=49641193ries&ref=cta
-
Not all EU member states have enacted national laws on data protection, and many will have difficulty shouldering the costs of doing so.
The second half of 2018 will provide early indicators of how much the European Union can influence large technology companies to address the privacy concerns of EU citizens.
Uncertainty regarding the severity of national enforcement could influence the regional development of technology, especially in terms of small and medium-sized enterprises.
The Big Picture
In preparation for Stratfor's upcoming 2018 Third-Quarter Forecast, we are releasing a series of supporting analyses, focusing on critical topics, regions and sectors. These assessments have been designed specifically to contextualize and augment the upcoming quarterly global forecast.
Data privacy and protection regulations have become increasingly critical elements of corporate strategy, especially as more sectors integrate artificial intelligence (AI). Just before the start of the third quarter of 2018, the European Union will begin enforcing sweeping modifications to its personal data privacy protections, giving the first indications regarding the enforcement of the policy across the Continent and how companies and member states will approach implementation.
See 2018 Annual Forecast
The Details of the GDPR
In an effort to allay the privacy concerns of EU citizens and make data privacy laws consistent across members' borders, the European Union began enforcing its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on May 25. For two years, companies worldwide have been preparing for the changes, which will be widespread and significantly impact their day-to-day operations.
The new regulations deepen data protection for European citizens in several ways. First, they expand the scope of the definition of personal data and provide avenues to enforce greater transparency at all stages of data collection and use. The regulations emphasize informed consent (through simple, understandable language) and grant more control to the individual, including the right to be forgotten and the right to access all collected data. The regulations also lay out strict data storage requirements and set a time limit (72 hours) for the issue of breach notifications. Finally, the GDPR includes language that makes the reuse of data by third parties difficult, while also stipulating severe fines for violations.
How Will Countries Implement the GDPR?
Though the GDPR standardizes data protection policies across the European Union, each individual member state must place its own language into national law, leaving the door open for countries to interpret and implement the regulations in different ways. This process is meant to streamline the regulation and legislation of data privacy, making the country in question the single authority on the matter within its borders. But in practice, this means countries across the European Union can all monitor and fine businesses in different ways.
The regulatory and financial limitations of EU member states will be the primary factors determining how each proceeds in implementing the GDPR. Several countries did not even pass national GDPR bills before May 25, and according to a Reuters survey, a majority of the participants don't believe they'll have the funding or power to enforce the legislation they do eventually establish.
A map of Europe's GDPR enforcement across various countries
Portuguese authorities have been vocal about their inability to afford the costs of enforcing the data privacy regulations, and authorities from France and the Netherlands have already indicated that they will be lenient in the initial months after the GDPR goes into effect. Traditionally, Berlin has had stricter data privacy protection legislation. Germany was among the first countries to implement national laws with regards to GDPR and will likely continue to be on the stricter end of the spectrum in terms of enforcement.
How Will Companies Handle the GDPR?
For businesses, simply bringing their security measures and customer interfaces up to the new standards of the GDPR will be an expensive task. Companies of all size are reportedly behind schedule on implementing the necessary changes, and starting in the third quarter, it will be important to keep an eye on how countries levy fines against companies based on size, region of operation and the location of their headquarters.
Smaller companies will face the biggest challenge, as they will have a larger per employee cost of implementation, though the record-processing requirements are somewhat relaxed for companies employing fewer than 250 people. For companies small enough that they operate in a single country, the European Union's country-by-country implementation strategy will have a massive impact. Nations with looser enforcement and more forgiving penalties will offer potential areas where smaller technology companies in Europe can still thrive.
Large, international companies, meanwhile, will be obliged to keep track of the different legislation throughout the European Union. But they will also have the money both to implement the new changes fairly easily and to fight any eventual fines in court.
The GDPR is likely to hit the middle tier of companies in the European technology sector the hardest. These businesses are large enough that they operate across multiple borders, but they don't have the financial heft to fight the legislation long term.
The GDPR's Impact on AI Development
The European Union recently released a road map plotting the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in the bloc. France is leading the charge, as well as promoting a start-up culture within the country itself. But an extensive study from the Center of Data Innovation indicates that the GDPR has the potential to delay or disrupt AI development in Europe. Data – corporate, personal and more – fuels AI, and the more the GDPR limits the sharing repurposing and reusing of data, the higher the cost will be for various AI applications.
The criteria that European countries develop to enforce data privacy will be a good indicator of whether the Continent prioritizes the GDPR or the somewhat incongruent goals of AI development. France, in particular, will be important to watch closely due to the stated goals of President Emmanuel Macron's government. The same goes for Germany, given that it has traditionally functioned as a strict enforcer of data privacy and protection.
Implications Beyond the European Union
How massive international tech companies handle the new regulations will indicate the degree to which the GDPR impacts the global market and the European Union's place within it. If companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook begin separating their European market from others by applying the privacy standards on the Continent alone, that would spell trouble for the European Union's ability to develop AI and keep pace with North American and Asian competitors. However, if these big corporations begin applying the privacy standards of the GDPR more broadly (Facebook already plans to offer EU safeguards to users globally), the European Union will be able to set the tone for future data privacy discussions and regulations on an international level.
-
U.S. Websites Go Dark in Europe as GDPR Data Rules Kick In
New European law foresees steep fines for companies that don’t comply with rules
GDPR: What Is It and How Might It Affect You?
The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation on data privacy came into force on Friday. This video explains how it could affect you, even if you don't live in the EU.
By Sam Schechner and
Natalia Drozdiak
Updated May 25, 2018 12:31 p.m. ET
149 COMMENTS
BRUSSELS—A new European privacy law took effect Friday, causing several major U.S. news websites to suspend access across the region as privacy activists filed complaints and data-protection regulators prepared to brandish their new enforcement powers.
Tronc Inc., TRNC +0.79% publisher of the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News and other U.S. newspapers, was among those that blocked readers in the European Union from accessing sites, as they scrambled to comply with the sweeping regulation.
“We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market,” Tronc said in notices it displayed when users attempted to access its news sites from the EU on Friday morning. A spokeswoman didn’t elaborate when asked for details.
Some U.S. regional newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises Inc. LEE 1.02% were also blocking access in the EU on Friday. Bookmarking app Instapaper, owned by Pinterest. Inc., said it was “temporarily unavailable” while the services makes changes “in light of” GDPR.
A spokesman for Lee Enterprises said that European traffic to its sites “is de minimis, and we believe blocking that traffic is in the best interest of our local media clients.”
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation authorizes steep fines for companies that don’t comply with the new rules, aimed at giving Europe-based users more control over the data about them that companies hold. As of Friday, firms that violate the EU’s privacy rules risk fines as high as 4% of their global revenue.
A screenshot shows a message to users trying to access the Los Angeles Times from Europe on Friday.
A screenshot shows a message to users trying to access the Los Angeles Times from Europe on Friday. Photo: George Downs for The Wall Street Journal
Businesses have raced to comply with the new law, but surveys indicate that a majority may not be ready. Some appear to be deciding it is safer to suspend access in Europe, at least temporarily, rather than risk sanctions, which the EU’s top privacy regulator this week warned could come soon.
“I’m sure you won’t have to wait for a couple of months,” said Andrea Jelinek, who heads the new European Data Protection Board, which includes national data-protection regulators from each of the EU’s member countries.
Speaking about companies’ decision to block their websites from operating in the EU, Ms. Jelinek said Friday that she expects the impact to be limited. “I’m convinced that the loss of information won’t be that big because I’m sure that the Los Angeles Times will reopen their website—I’m sure,” she said.
News sites weren’t alone in feeling heat from GDPR on Friday. Privacy activists were quick to take aim Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, using the new law’s provisions allowing consumer groups to file collective complaints. On Friday, a litigation initiative started by activist Max Schrems alleged that the companies demand “forced consent” from users by applying new take-it-or-leave-it privacy policies.
Those complaints will be reviewed by Helen Dixon, Ireland’s data protection commissioner, who is the lead regulator for Google and Facebook because they make their EU headquarters in Ireland. Ms. Dixon’s office is already reviewing along with other regulators what data companies can legitimately demand as necessary to fulfill a contract with consumers.
“This is an issue we will be looking at immediately,” Ms. Dixon said on Friday. “We are going to have a lot on our plate.”
What Data You Agree to Surrender
Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said the company has worked to comply with GDPR, updating policies and privacy settings, and will continue to do so. “Our work to improve people’s privacy doesn’t stop on May 25th.”
A Google spokesman said the company has updated its products to give users more control, adding: “We build privacy and security into our products from the very earliest stages and are committed to complying” with the GDPR.
GDPR arrives as Facebook is still struggling to contain the fallout from revelations that data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained the personal information of as many as 87 million users of the social network.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited European Parliament this past week to answer questions about the scandal, which EU officials say only reconfirmed the need for the new privacy rules and helped promote the legislation to the broader public.
To Read New GDPR Privacy Policies You'll Need a Football Field
Those updated privacy policies flooding your inbox due to Europe's GDPR compliance deadline on May 25 are so long that if you print out the ones from 30-some most-used apps, you could span a football field. Really. WSJ's Joanna Stern provides tips on how to tackle the gibberish.
On Thursday, Mr. Zuckerberg told a tech conference in Paris that his company has worked hard to comply with GDPR, including by giving users the option of seeing targeted ads on Facebook based on their use of other websites and apps.
“The vast majority of people choose to opt in,” he said, “because the reality is, if you’re going to see ads on a service, you want them to be relevant and good ads.”
On Friday, Ms. Jelinek, head of the EU privacy board, said that regulators won’t be “sanctioning machines” and that they will use other tools like warnings to ensure compliance.
Companies say, however, that the potential for aggressive penalties is likely to affect some business decisions. Large enterprises acquiring small startups that use personal data might decide against launching a service in Europe, out of concern that the startup could expose the parent to a fine based on the entire enterprise’s revenue.
“If I could choose between [launching a data-related business] in Paris and in New York…I’m going to at least advise the business people to do it in New York,” said David Hoffman, global privacy officer at Intel Corp.
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com and Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com
-
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/18/why-do-we-care-so-much-about-privacy?mbid=nl_Daily%20061218&CNDID=50142053&spMailingID=13676996&spUserID=MjAxODUyNTc2OTUwS0&spJobID=1421083964&spReportId=MTQyMTA4Mzk2NAS2
-
Amazon Prime is seriously tempting me to sign up but I fear it spying on me (they even want my phone number!), selling my data, etc.
-
Amazon Prime is seriously tempting me to sign up but I fear it spying on me (they even want my phone number!), selling my data, etc.
Use a burner phone and a private PO box service. Use a name like Michael Dennis to set up the account and view the movies on your laptop using you VPN.
-
I looked into burner phones; as best as I can tell I would have to pay a shitload of money every month.
Can I just lie about my phone number?
What would Amazon do with my real number anyway?
==============================================
http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/393629-supreme-court-rules-law-enforcement-needs-warrant-to-search?userid=188403
-
Just go to Walmart and buy the cheapest prepaid phone with cash. Keep in mind a true burner phone would never be activated at your home or business.
-
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/
-
https://balkin.blogspot.com/2018/06/carpenter-s-curiosities-and-its.html
-
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/worried-facial-recognition-technology-juggalo-makeup-prevents-involuntary-surveillance-232354372.html
-
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/worried-facial-recognition-technology-juggalo-makeup-prevents-involuntary-surveillance-232354372.html
When I was working gangs, interviewing Juggalos was always the least desirable assignment.
I know more about that subculture than I ever wanted to.
-
"Juggalos "
They paint their faces?
what is this about?
BTW do you know anything about professional crooks in the music business?
-
"Juggalos "
They paint their faces?
what is this about?
BTW do you know anything about professional crooks in the music business?
There is a music duo known as the Insane Clown Posse. Their fans are known as Juggalos. The loyalty to the performers and the subculture that has developed around it has been the Nexus for violent gang like crimes nationwide. ICP typically performs wearing face paint.
Not my area of expertise, but it's my understanding that organized crime has had it's connections with the music industry since at least when Sinatra first hit the charts, if not before then.
-
https://www.datapilot.com/?utm_source=Officer.com%20Badge%20Mailing%203rd%20Party&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS190205015&o_eid=2450A5959134B2V&rdx_ident%5Bpull%5D=omeda%7C2450A5959134B2V
-
Not really new, just a new package.
-
February 18, 2019
Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile
"Sometimes [two and two are four], Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”
One of the key themes from George Orwell’s dystopic novel 1984 is that the Party can do and say whatever it wants.
And more importantly, you must believe it, with all your heart. No matter how absurd.
That’s doublethink. It is impossible for two plus two to equal three, four, and five simultaneously. But if the Party says it is so, it is so.
If you can’t make yourself believe two contradictory facts simultaneously, that makes you a thought criminal -- an enemy of the Party.
Thoughtcrime is thinking any thought that contradicts the Party.
Facecrime is when you have the wrong expression on your face. For instance, if captured enemy soldiers are being paraded through the streets, looking sympathetic is a facecrime.
Newspeak is the language of the Party--one that has painstakingly been removed of unnecessary words, or words that might contradict the Party’s ideals.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
During daily two minutes hate, citizens shout and curse whatever enemies the Party shows them.
And the face of the Party, Big Brother, is watching you. He helps you be a better citizen.
This isn’t just some random literature lesson. Understanding Orwell’s 1984 will help you understand 2019 America.
For instance, one California state senator is working on her own version of Newspeak.
She has banned the members of her committee from using gender pronouns, such as he, she, her, and him. Instead they must use “they and them” to respect non-binary gender choices.
So Billy Joel’s famous song “She’s always a woman” would become “They’re always a non-binary gender. . .” Somehow that just doesn’t ring with the same sweetness.
Last month a high school student famously committed a facecrime when he stood, apparently smirking, while a Native American activist beat a drum in his face.
The 16-year-old was then subjected to “two minutes hate” by the entire nation. The Party labeled him an enemy, and Twitter obliged.
Of course when I reference the ‘Party’, I don’t mean to imply that all these Orwellian developments are coming from a single political party.
They’ve ALL done their parts to advance Orwellian dystopia and make it a reality.
Senators Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders want to limit corporate stock buybacks and share payouts. But the tax code already has the accumulated profits tax, which punishes corporations for NOT engaging in stock buybacks and share payouts…
It’s like doublethink… you have to simultaneously pay and not pay out dividends.
Same goes for cops will pull you over for speeding, but also for “suspicious” textbook perfect driving.
The #MeToo movement made it a thoughtcrime to not immediately believe the accuser and condemn the accused, no evidence required.
When Matt Damon pointed out that we should not conflate a pat on the butt with rape, he was met with “two minutes hate” for expressing the wrong opinion.
On college campuses, some students are upset that white students are using multicultural spaces. Apparently “multicultural” is Newspeak for “no whites allowed.”
And when a controversy over offensive Halloween costumes erupted at Yale a few years ago, it was a student free speech group which suppressed any debate on the topic.
It’s amazing how they want you to celebrate diversity… as long as its not intellectual diversity.
1984 was supposed to be a warning. Instead, it has become an instruction manual.
To your freedom,
Signature
Simon Black,
Founder, SovereignMan.com
-
http://fullmeasure.news/news/cover-story/encryption-battle
Encryption Battle
BY FULL MEASURE STAFF SUNDAY, MARCH 13TH 2016
March 13, 2016 — As soon as you set a passcode on your Apple iPhone, it sets off a feverish encryption process.
If a hacker tries to get data off the memory chips, it just looks like a scrambled mess.
But the same feature that's protecting your security, is keeping the FBI locked out of any secrets held in a terrorist's iPhone after he killed 14 people in California last December.
A federal judge has ordered Apple to create software to unlock the iPhone.
Apple is fighting the order.
Full Measure has an extraordinary story that predates the Apple conundrum. In fact, it predates what most understand to be the beginning of widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens after 9/11.
In October of 1997, Joe Nacchio was CEO of Qwest Communications, a major phone company out West.
One of his vice presidents told him he had an unexpected visitor.
Joe Nacchio: He came in and he said, 'Joe, we have a general downstairs who wants to meet you.' Which I thought was pretty surprising, because you know generals don't just drop by. It was a three-star.
Sharyl: Who was the general?
Nacchio: Well, his name is classified believe it or not. Who it was, I'm not, I'm still not allowed to disclose.
The general was from a U.S. intelligence agency interested in paying Qwest to use its cutting-edge global fiber optics network for classified programs.
But to learn more, Nacchio first needed a top-secret security clearance.
Nacchio: I had my clearance by January of 1998. We received that contract shortly thereafter and that led to us working with multiple intelligence agencies.
Nacchio's job as CEO of Qwest became steeped in a secretive world of classified meetings and clandestine government contracts. He's still barred from saying exactly what the projects involved.
Nacchio: So you could either put equipment in, you could either monitor, there's a whole bunch of things you can do.
Sharyl: As head of a telecom company, you were meeting with top spy agency people?
Nacchio: Yes. I'm allowed to say that I worked with four clandestine security agencies and senior government officials.
For several years, Nacchio says, government requests to monitor and surveil Qwest customers came with proper legal authority and brought Qwest lots of cash.
Sharyl: The telecom companies, they make a lot of money off these contracts when they cooperate with the intel agencies?
Nacchio: It's all done in a classified way that nobody sees it. So yes, we made money. And again, as a CEO of a public corporation, that's good business, besides being patriotic.
Sharyl: Was it hundreds of millions of dollars over the years?
Nacchio: Oh, easily yes.
The mutually beneficial relationship continued until February 27, 2001, when Nacchio says he got an astonishing request at a meeting at the headquarters for the National Security Agency or NSA.
Nacchio: I fly into Washington. My guys meet me, take me to a SCIF that we have that's in Maryland. A SCIF is one of those rooms that are designed to specs that you can't have eavesdropping in. When I grew up, and we used to watch Maxwell Smart on television, it was the cone of silence thing. I go in there, I get briefed, and then at the end, which was very surprising, a new request is made of us.
Sharyl: By whom?
Nacchio: By someone across the table. I was supposed to meet with (General) Hayden that day. He didn't show up at the last minute, which should have put yellow flashing lights in my
Sharyl: He was head of the NSA at the time.
Nacchio: He was head of the NSA. He was a three-star, head of the NSA, who Bush later appoints to be four-stars and runs the CIA. So when that request came, I was a little bit surprised. It didn't sound right to me. As a matter of fact, it sounded very wrong to me.
Sharyl: What was the request?
Nacchio: Well, it was a request to do something that under the law I didn't believe the foreign intelligence agencies, particularly the NSA, had, were authorized to do unless they had a FISA warrant.
A FISA warrant would come from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and would authorize the NSA to do something that was otherwise illegal for it to do: collect data in the U.S.
Sharyl: And you can't say exactly what they asked you?
Nacchio: No, that remains classified. But anyway, something was asked. I asked if they had a FISA warrant. They said it wasn't required. I thought that was pretty strange.
If there was no warrant, he says, he asked if the White House had given executive authority for the project.
Nacchio: They said that theyit wasn't required.
Sharyl: This was under President Bush?
Nacchio: Yes, this was under President Bush and this was prior to 9/11. So I said that we couldn't do it, and we wouldn't do it.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks are often cited as justification for the government's controversial programs to collect information on Americans without court warrants.
But the NSA proposition to Qwest was nearly seven months before 9/11, according to Nacchio.
Nacchio: After that meeting, there were repeated requests over the next several months, and I continued to answer the request by saying, 'look, show me legal authority and we'll be happy to do it. Okay, but I can't do it without legal authority.' You know, in other words, I can be sued civilly but the government can't.
Sharyl: How did you begin to understand that you were becoming odd man out?
Nacchio: It was June 5th of 2001, about four months later. And I'm sitting next to Dick Clark, and Dick leans over to me and he says, kind of incidental to the purpose of the meeting, 'Joe, you know that contract that you thought you guys were getting?' And I said, 'yeah,' and he said, 'well it's going to someone else.' And I was a little bit surprised, 'cause we had been on this a long time.
Dick or Richard Clarke was a key White House Advisor for Cybersecurity. He didn't respond to our requests for comment. He's shown in a photo from 2002, giving Nacchio a Presidential Certificate.
In another photo, Nacchio and other CEOs are shown with Clarke, being sworn in on the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.
Nacchio says that contract Qwest wasn't getting after all, dealt a major blow.
Sharyl: A valuable contract?
Nacchio: Yeah, yeah, we're talking, we're talking in the hundreds of millions, okay. We're not talking 10 million. We're talking a big deal contract. Well, what ends up over the next several months is about four or five contracts we thought we were going to get, we never got. We didn't get.
Nacchio viewed it as reprisal for his refusal to take part in what he viewed as an illegal program.
Nacchio: It was in excess of $500 million that I was counting on that didn't come in that year, in 2001 alone.
Nacchio left Qwest the following year without mending that fence. Then, three years later, in August of 2005, he got a call. The Justice Department was investigating him for insider trading of Qwest stock four years earlier.
Nacchio claims the government was targeting him in retaliation, something the government strongly denies. His defense hinged on telling the jury how his relationship with the spy agencies had gone sour. But there was a catch: it was all top secret.
Nacchio lost his case.
Nacchio: I'm barred under the law from bringing any of it up. I'm barred from the contracts. I'm barred from naming the agencies. I'm barred from naming who I was with. I was even barred from saying the meeting on February 27th happened.
Some of it would later become public.
About the time of Nacchio's trial, the government's controversial programs were revealed for the first time.
President George W. Bush, Dec. 17, 2005: This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security.
The New York Times reported the NSA had been using phone companies to collect private information of U.S. citizens without court warrants.
Snowden, June 6, 2013: The NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default.
Later, NSA contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle in this explosive interview with The Guardian. He exposed the Obama administration's vast expansion of data collection.
Snowden: But I, sitting at my desk, certainly had authorities to wiretap anyone from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President, if I had a personal e-mail.
It was Snowden's example of a federal judge that hit home with Nacchio. By then, he was serving a four and a half year prison sentence.
In a bizarre twist, the judge in Nacchio's case, Edward Nottingham, was soon embroiled in scandal, accused of soliciting prostitutes and allegedly asking one to lie to investigators. He resigned and apologized, but wasn't prosecuted.
After his dealing with the spy agencies, Nacchio wonders if they knew about Nottingham's private scandal. Could that have been held over the judge's head as he ruled for the government against Nacchio?
Nacchio: Look, I think the intelligence agencies in that time frame were wiretapping government officials, judges, I mean they were just monitoring everything.
Government officials call Nacchio a convicted felon whose speculation can't be believed. Nottingham firmly denies anyone spoke to him about his personal scandals during Nacchio's trial.
President Bush's NSA and CIA Chief Michael Hayden, Nacchio's point of contact back then, didn't respond to our requests for comment, but has championed the controversial surveillance.
Michael Hayden, May 12, 2006 Press Conference: Everything we've done has been lawful. It's been briefed to the appropriate members of Congress. The only purpose of the Agency's activities is to preserve the security and liberty of the American people, and I think we have done that.
President Obama also defends the government's mass data collection.
President Obama, June 19, 2013: Nobody is listening to your phone calls. That's not what this program's about.
Nacchio: My advice to people is, put nothing on the Internet that you wouldn't take a billboard out on 42nd Street and Broadway, and publicize. You have your bank records, your health records, you're looking at porn sites, you're illegal dating or whatever you're doing, is all known.
Sharyl: By the government?
Nacchio: And by their agents. Now, let's remember who the agents are. The agents are the telephone companies, the agents are the banks, the agents are Apple, the agents are Google, and the agents are Facebook. They're all involved.
Sharyl: What do you tell Apple if they were to call you and ask for advice?
Nacchio: I would have said, keep this very quiet and cooperate. Because you're going to lose this one in court, and what's going to happen to you when this is all over is, for the next five years of your life, every federal agency that has some jurisdiction on you, it's going to be crawling all over Apple. And that's what they do.
Nacchio's conviction was overturned on appeal in a decision that found Judge Nottingham made key errors.
But the government got the conviction reinstated by a split judges' panel.
A hearing on the Apple case is scheduled for next month.
-
That is a remarkable article.
-
That is a remarkable article.
Funny how it’s being ignored by our professional journalists.
-
That is a remarkable article.
Yes. Much to learn and discuss there. We better keep an eye on Sharyl Attkisson.
-
Remember she was at the tip of the spear on reporting on Fast & Furious too.
-
Remember she was at the tip of the spear on reporting on Fast & Furious too.
Like the Nacchio refusal, that might be exactly what went wrong for her.
The Nacchio story started before 9/11/01. He ran the 'phone company' where Zacaria Moussaoui, 12th hijacker, was operating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacarias_Moussaoui
Between August 2001 when he was arrested and Sept 11 when our country was attacked, they did not 'connect the dots'.
So much good could be done if intel agencies used but did not abuse bulk data.
Before the current FISA warrant scandal, I favored greater intelligence to keep us safe and wasn't aware of any abuses. Naive of me.
In the Obama administration and their allies in the deep state agencies, abuse of power is just what they do. We haven't uncovered the tip of the iceberg yet in the FBI DOJ abuse. We don't even know who directed Susan Rice's lies or who was pulling Samantha Power's strings. No one has paid a price for it.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/samantha-power-sought-to-unmask-americans-on-almost-daily-basis-sources-say
-
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2019/04/19/washington-supreme-court-refusing-to-let-cops-enter-homes-without-warrants-isnt-obstruction/?fbclid=IwAR1-LcXcpqMENMurgVACdsA0IYAnqtc7IK4hrArcMW2wPuHLfrC1F-L23G0#49d01a8f67a3
-
What say we to this?
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/san-francisco-oakland-could-be-first-cities-in-nation-to-ban-facial-recognition/
-
What say we to this?
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/san-francisco-oakland-could-be-first-cities-in-nation-to-ban-facial-recognition/
Let me know when they ban sh*tting on the streets and dumping heroin syringes everywhere.
-
Witty rejoinder noted, but the question remains :lol:
-
Witty rejoinder noted, but the question remains :lol:
The only reason they want to ban facial recognition is so crimes by Antifa and masses of "youths" can't be effectively investigated/prosecuted.
-
OTOH I don't like the Orwellian nature of such a system at all.
-
What say we to this?
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/san-francisco-oakland-could-be-first-cities-in-nation-to-ban-facial-recognition/
It used to be that conservatives and libertarians were the ones opposed to national ID cards and all the tracking. Not really removed from govt, google, facebook and the like are tracking our everything including our images. Take a look at the new Chinese government system of tracking AND RATING everyone's loyalty to the regime, and the possibility of doing that here - as if they weren't already. Track, log and map out gunowners? Already in progress. Now add facial recognition to it all. What could go wrong for liberty and privacy enthusiasts we used to call Americans.
There are issues where the left and right can agree. Good to see Bay area liberals taking an interest in privacy, an unenumerated right.
Limiting the ability of law enforcement to use all tools available to solve crimes is and unfortunate but foreseeable result of the recent abuses of the NSA and FISA systems.
OTOH, with plastic surgery rampant, how will they track us? For example, who is this and what computer could pick him out of a lineup?
(https://static.politico.com/dims4/default/b193a58/2147483647/resize/856x/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F07%2F6f%2Fc13067ec4f58bcf0633f072e186c%2F190513-joe-biden-gty-773.jpg)
-
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/05/14/whatsapps-cybersecurity-breach-phones-hit-with-israeli-spyware-over-voice-calls/#1f3f169d5549
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5200661/Is-phone-listening-word-say.html
Is your phone listening to your every word and WATCHING you through your phone's camera? How thousands of people are convinced 'coincidence' adverts are anything but
Writer Jen Lewis posted viral image to Twitter of a Facebook ad featuring women wearing identical outfit to her
Tweet went viral with hundreds sharing their stories of social networks 'listening in' on conversations
Journalist Julia Lawrence (with the help of daughter Lois) investigated the powers of online advertising for the Daily Mail
By JULIA LAWRENCE FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 20:44 EST, 20 December 2017 | UPDATED: 08:52 EST, 21 December 2017
We were sitting in a rooftop restaurant, 30 storeys up, overlooking the Empire State building in New York, when my daughter confessed that she thought she was being spied on by a professional network of cyberspooks.
‘Look at this,’ said Lois, presenting me with her smartphone, where an advert for a snazzy little instamatic camera was displayed. It had popped up a few seconds earlier, when she’d logged on to Instagram.
She met my quizzical ‘so what?’ face with exasperation.
‘What were we talking about? Just now? In the street, down there?’ she said.
Picture perfect: Jen Lewis (left) and the alarmingly similar advert sent on Facebook shortly after +5
Picture perfect: Jen Lewis (left) and the alarmingly similar advert sent on Facebook shortly after
Sure enough, we’d been window shopping before our lunch reservation, and spotted a little gadget shop. I remembered Lois had commented on the instamatic cameras on display (dropping a few hints for her forthcoming 21st birthday, I suspected).
We’d had a brief conversation about how they were all the rage in the Eighties, and how one of my memories of Christmas parties at my parents’ house was listening to that familiar ‘whirrr’ and watching the wealthier guests flapping about the instant photos, as everyone waited for them to dry.
RELATED ARTICLES
Previous
1
2
Next
She's aging backwards! Pettifleur Berenger unveils her...
'Pokemon Go' gets real: Niantic reveals new version of hit...
Mystery of the gigantic snake-like cosmic filament found...
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Share
They were the selfies of their day, and good fun (if you could afford the camera film). How lovely that they were making a comeback, I commented. And we moved on.
Then, less than 20 minutes later, an advert popped up on Lois’s phone, for the exact same product. Same colour, same model, same everything.
‘They’re listening, they’re watching,’ she said.
‘Oh don’t be daft,’ I replied. ‘Who’s listening? Who’d want to listen to us?’
‘I’m serious,’ said Lois. ‘This keeps happening. This is no coincidence. Someone is listening to our conversations. Advertisers. They’re listening via our phones’ microphones.’
Our activity on websites and apps and demographic information is gathered using increasingly sophisticated technology to bring us personalised adverts (stock image) +5
Our activity on websites and apps and demographic information is gathered using increasingly sophisticated technology to bring us personalised adverts (stock image)
A little melodramatic and paranoid, you might think. I certainly did. I assumed Lois had simply been researching the product online before we flew to New York, and had forgotten.
We all know ‘targeted advertising’ has been prevalent for some years now, via our social media apps and search engines. Facebook was one of the first to introduce it four years ago. It’s no big secret: go on the John Lewis website and choose a blouse, or Google Nigella’s smart eye-level oven, and the next time you log on to Facebook or Instagram, there’s a good chance they’ll pop up as adverts there.
While it felt a little uncomfortable and intrusive to begin with, we’ve all sort of got used to it.
Our activity on websites and apps and demographic information is gathered using increasingly sophisticated technology to bring us personalised adverts.
People’s electronic markers — known as ‘cookies’ — from websites they visit are gathered and passed to advertisers so they can target us with products relevant to our tastes and interests (and ones we’re more likely to buy).
Facebook categorically denies it uses smartphone microphones to gather information for the purposes of targeted advertising +5
Facebook categorically denies it uses smartphone microphones to gather information for the purposes of targeted advertising
It is not illegal. Although under the Data Protection Act 1998, a person has to actively consent to their data being collected and the purpose for which it’s used, few people actually take time to police what they consent to.
The terms and conditions and privacy statements you sign up to when you buy a smartphone or download an app are rarely scrutinised before we tick the box and wade in.
But Lois swore she hadn’t Googled an instamatic camera. That was the first time she’d ever had a conversation about them. ‘I’m telling you, they’re listening,’ she said, and I admit I stuffed my own phone a little deeper into my bag. Could she be right?
Well, hundreds of other people seem to think so. Stories on Twitter of these ‘blind coincidence’ adverts are abundant.
And not just restricted to voice snooping either — some are convinced their phones are spying on them via their cameras, too.
Last month, a creepy story swept social media about an American woman called Jen Lewis who was shown an advert on Facebook for a bra — featuring a model wearing exactly the same clothes she was wearing at that moment. The same pink shirt and skinny jeans.
Lewis, a writer and designer, recreated the model’s pose and posted the near-identical pictures side-by-side on Twitter where they went viral with more than 20,000 likes.
While Facebook insisted the ad was a coincidence, hundreds of horrified social media users commented — many suggesting the ad could have been targeted with image recognition software, using Jen’s laptop or smartphone camera as a spy window into her life. ‘Seriously, cover up your camera lens,’ warned one, as stories were swapped of people receiving adverts for wedding planners, minutes after popping the question, and cat food after merely discussing whether to buy a cat.
People’s electronic markers — known as ‘cookies’ — from websites they visit are gathered and passed to advertisers so they can target us with products relevant to our tastes (stock image) +5
People’s electronic markers — known as ‘cookies’ — from websites they visit are gathered and passed to advertisers so they can target us with products relevant to our tastes (stock image)
One Facebook user is so convinced his conversations are being monitored that he switched off the microphone on his smartphone — and, sure enough, there haven’t been any more ‘strange coincidences’ since.
Tom Crewe, 28, a marketing manager from Bournemouth, was immediately suspicious in March when he noticed an advert on Facebook for beard transplant surgery. Only hours earlier he’d joked with a colleague about them both getting one, as they remained smooth-faced, despite their age.
‘I had my phone’s Facebook app switched on at the time. Within a few hours, an ad came through for hair and beard transplants,’ he says.
‘I just thought: “Why have I been targeted?” I’d never Googled “hair or beard transplants” or sent an email to anyone about it or talked about it on Facebook.’
The fact that the ad for beard transplants was so unusual and specific made him suspect his phone had been eavesdropping.
He became convinced when later that month he received an advert to his phone — again weirdly and quite specifically — for Peperami sausages.
Companies have developed algorithms that can look for patterns and determine potentially useful things about your behaviour and interests (stock image) +5
Companies have developed algorithms that can look for patterns and determine potentially useful things about your behaviour and interests (stock image)
‘Again, it was a casual conversation in the office. I’d just eaten a Peperami, and it was a few hours before lunch, and a colleague joked how he didn’t think this was a particularly good thing to have for breakfast.
‘Again, I’d never Googled the product or mentioned it on Facebook or anywhere online. It’s just something I buy during my twice-a-week shop at Tesco.
‘Then I get an advert for it. This happened within two weeks of the beard incident.’
It so disturbed him that he researched it and saw others talking about it.
‘I saw articles and got information and turned off the Facebook app’s access to my phone’s microphone. I’ve not noticed it happening since then.’
Facebook categorically denies it uses smartphone microphones to gather information for the purposes of targeted advertising.
A spokesperson said being targeted with an advert for a beard transplant was just an example of heightened perception, or the phenomenon whereby people notice things they’ve talked about.
With 1.7 billion users being served tens of adverts a day, there’s always going to be something uncanny. Google and WhatsApp also categorically deny bugging private conversations, describing the anecdotal evidence as pure coincidence.
One thing technology experts agree on, though, is that the ability to create technology that can randomly sweep millions of conversations for repeated phrases or identifiable names, definitely exists.
Companies have developed algorithms that can look for patterns and determine potentially useful things about your behaviour and interests. Whether they are being used by the companies with access to your phone, however, remains unproven.
Not convinced? Consider the Siri or Google Assistant functions, designed to understand your voice and pick out key phrases, and with a huge vocabulary in their grasp.
I saw articles and got information and turned off the Facebook app’s access to my phone’s microphone. I’ve not noticed it happening since then
It’s not too big a stretch to think of this technology developed to sweep conversations as a marketing tool. ‘Smartphones are small tracking devices,’ says Michelle De Mooy, acting director for the U.S.’s Democracy and Technology Privacy and Data project.
‘We may not think of them like that because they’re very personal devices — they travel with us, they sleep next to us. But they are, in fact, collectors of a vast amount of information including audio information. When you are using a free service, you are basically paying for it with information.’
As yet, however, there’s no concrete evidence that we are being listened to. Any complaints about spying would be dealt with by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which handles legislation governing how personal information is stored and shared across the UK.
They say no one has complained officially. Tales of cybersnooping haven’t gone beyond ‘shaggy dog stories’ on Twitter and Facebook.
When approached by the Mail, an ICO spokesman said: ‘We haven’t received any complaints on the issue of Facebook listening to people’s conversations.
‘Businesses and organisations operating in the UK are required by law to process personal data fairly and lawfully, this means being clear and open with individuals about how information will be used.’
That law, however, is struggling to keep up with technology, according to Ewa Luger, a researcher and specialist in the ethical design of intelligent machines, at the University of Edinburgh. ‘I think this is a problem ethically,’ she says. ‘If I had an expectation that this application was recording what I was saying, that’s one thing, but if I don’t, then it’s ethically questionable. I may be having private conversations and taking my phone into the bathroom.
‘This is a new area of research — voice assistance technology. We have only been looking at this for 12 months. It takes a while for research to catch up.’
In the meantime, Lois and I have turned off our microphones. It’s easy to do via your phone’s Settings.
To be honest, I don’t think there are people with earphones in a bunker, desperate to know what car I’m thinking of buying, but I’d rather, in this increasingly public world, maintain a bit of privacy. You really don’t know who’s listening.
■ Additional reporting Stephanie Condron
-
https://fee.org/articles/the-stingray-is-exactly-why-the-4th-amendment-was-written/?fbclid=IwAR2aaia4F4IAZHXgprrAwYjEgf_TuPcjV2domL0NlXuLYYl0OVBjoZcARV0
-
https://fee.org/articles/the-stingray-is-exactly-why-the-4th-amendment-was-written/?fbclid=IwAR2aaia4F4IAZHXgprrAwYjEgf_TuPcjV2domL0NlXuLYYl0OVBjoZcARV0
There are counter stingray techniques.
-
"There are counter stingray techniques"
what are they?
-
"There are counter stingray techniques"
what are they?
Stingray detection apps, burner and pseudo burner phones and the use of Faraday bags as part of a structured OPSEC plan.
-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest
-
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article233954187.html?fbclid=IwAR0AOONvG_gGdBa9R3A7WP2BuPbeXNOnTDMNW0ZkwuQGvwuEjLpagr6iIlQ
-
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article233954187.html?fbclid=IwAR0AOONvG_gGdBa9R3A7WP2BuPbeXNOnTDMNW0ZkwuQGvwuEjLpagr6iIlQ
That few? The technology is seriously flawed!
-
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614642/dna-database-gedmatch-golden-state-killer-security-risk-hack/
-
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614642/dna-database-gedmatch-golden-state-killer-security-risk-hack/
Another brick in the American Panopticon.
-
By Charlie Warzel
Opinion writer at large
Last week, at a conference in Portugal, I met John Napier Tye. He is a former State Department employee, a whistle-blower and a co-founder of Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit law firm that represents individuals trying to expose wrongdoing. As you may have noticed, whistle-blowers are very much in the news these days, and Tye is very much in the center of that world.
Today’s newsletter is a Q. and A. with Tye. We talked about whether it’s possible to stay anonymous in 2019, how to protect your privacy like a spy, whether regular people are at risk of becoming targets and how to become a whistle-blower if you’re a witness to something troubling.
This is a condensed and edited version of our conversation:
What are the biggest threats right now to privacy for normal citizens?
It’s useful to distinguish between bulk collection and targeted surveillance. Both are threats. The average citizen is likely already caught up by bulk collection, although the proliferation of targeted surveillance technologies are increasingly threatening whistle-blowers, journalists and others that find themselves on the wrong side of unaccountable governments and security agencies.
Bulk collection affects everyone. A number of governments and companies have the goal of building databases with detailed profile information for every person on earth, or at least every internet user — including where you are at any given moment, who your friends are, what kind of messages and photos you are creating and how you think about the world. They are closer than you might expect.
Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISEMENT
Some entities, including the American government, effectively capture and store a huge portion of all the private data worldwide, perhaps even a majority. The last decade or so is the first time in human history that such a thing has even been possible, and we’re only just now starting to wrestle with the implications.
I hear objections that regular people without public profiles or those who don’t deal with sensitive information don’t need to worry about spyware swooping in and compromising their devices. What’s your response to that?
The best thing you can do is avoid being a target. Because if you are a high-value target, there is no safe way to use digital communication devices. Companies, like NSO Group, sell surveillance software to governments with terrible human rights records, no questions asked. NSO surveillance software was found on Jamal Khashoggi’s phone before he was murdered, and on the phones of other journalists, human rights defenders and opposition figures.
It’s not just journalists and activists — more people than you would expect are targeted for individual surveillance. There are auction sites where anyone can pay to get targeted surveillance software in a matter of minutes. It’s not just governments, but also run-of-the-mill criminals and jilted lovers who are using this kind of surveillance software at a lower cost than you would expect. And the victims almost never even learn they were hacked. A lot more industries than you would expect are targeted for penetration by foreign governments. And it’s not just the top executives; most hacking starts with junior employees and then escalates.
What about tech companies or companies with some security savvy?
Hopefully, employees at Facebook and other internet and telecom companies understand by now that they are being targeted. But we know that foreign governments are hacking energy companies and utilities, state and local governments, financial firms, airlines, hospitals, universities, manufacturing, Hollywood studios, rideshare companies, even agriculture, fashion and retail. The costs of hacking are so low, and the value of our data is so high, that targeted surveillance happens a lot more than we expect.
Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISEMENT
If you’re in an industry of any interest at all to foreign governments, even if you’re a junior employee, then you might be individually targeted for hacking. Even if you work as a hair stylist, public-school teacher, restaurant server or some other job with a very local focus, it appears that there’s more targeted hacking in local disputes and by intimate partners.
You deal with incredibly sensitive information every day. What’s your setup to ensure communications stay private?
Unfortunately, security is expensive and inconvenient, and there is no easy way to secure yourself. Whistleblower Aid has gone to great lengths to create systems that are harder to hack. While we aspire to become the most secure legal organization on earth, we know that there is no such thing as 100 percent security. Whenever possible, we do things in person with no devices nearby, or in hard copy, and then we burn the paper. We have a manual typewriter with the old-fashioned ribbons.
How does Whistleblower Aid protect potential clients’ privacy?
After someone becomes our client, we typically give them a new device that they use only for communication with us. But because it’s so easy to hack any particular device, and we expect that we are being targeted, we have to ensure that our clients’ devices are not associated with ours in any way.
Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISMENT
From the moment a client reaches out to us, we make an extensive effort to protect their communications with us and advise them about how to be safer in the rest of their life. From burners to Faraday Bags and other tried-and-true techniques to avoid surveillance, we invest heavily in providing clients with alternate technological means to communicate with us, and work hard to avoid physical and location tracking.
We have a special system for receiving new inquiries from prospective clients. Prospective clients must install a special browser called Tor onto a personal laptop and send us encrypted messages to our custom platform called SecureDrop. Tor is the only browser that strips off all the metadata like IP addresses from all traffic, so that if our SecureDrop is somehow hacked, even we aren’t holding identifying data.
With the presumption that Whistleblower Aid is under surveillance, we’ve deliberately disabled all other ways to contact us so that we aren’t inadvertently exposing new clients before they even get started. We don’t have emails or web forms or even a mailing address.
What’s your advice for how people can replicate this practice themselves? Can it be done without burner phones and dead drops?
For someone who’s truly a high-value target, there is no way to safely use a digital device. The surveillance systems that we face are designed to track people with resources and motivation to hide what they are doing. It is a terrible irony that journalists trying to protect their sources, and lawyers trying to protect their clients, must borrow digital tradecraft techniques from the world of espionage in order to make their essential contributions.
It is hard to be totally secure. Invariably, people want that one device or app that will protect them. Unfortunately this won’t happen. What we recommend instead is that people consult a guide like this one. Avoid email, which is always insecure.
Can a whistle-blower stay truly anonymous in 2019?
Sometimes, but it can’t be guaranteed. Even when the law says you have a right to be anonymous, some people may have an interest in trying to identify you. On the other hand, there are still a lot of whistle-blowers, including some of our clients, who are able to make disclosures and hold institutions accountable while remaining anonymous.
It’s possible that somebody reading this now has seen something in their line of work or has evidence they’d like to come forward with. What’s the best way to become a whistle-blower? And what should they absolutely avoid?
Before you do anything else, you should talk to a lawyer you trust, who can protect your conversation with attorney-client privilege. Do not talk to anyone at work, do not forward any emails. Following the advice of counsel, you should preserve the evidence of misconduct. But you should be careful to follow all laws that apply; for instance, you can’t just take classified files home with you. Every case is different, so the only universal advice is to speak with experienced counsel.
-
https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/fisa-court-ruled-that-fbi-improperly-used-nsa-surveillance-data-to-snoop-on-americans/
-
https://nypost.com/2019/12/07/democrats-have-embraced-the-exact-surveillance-tactics-they-used-to-warn-about/?fbclid=IwAR0tQ9qRE5PbbKP9ePj0KndE9nLYrYAtA489d9eRYn3WHJeuxdI0j7ybJ6A
-
https://truepundit.com/power-grab-amid-global-chaos-lindsey-graham-teams-with-super-dems-feinstein-blumenthal-to-end-internet-privacy-for-good/
-
https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonchandler/2020/03/23/coronavirus-could-infect-privacy-and-civil-liberties-forever/#286de048365d
-
second post
WSJ
Government Tracking How People Move Around in Coronavirus Pandemic
Goal is to get location data in up to 500 U.S. cities to help plan response; privacy concerns call for “strong legal safeguards,” activist says
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has started to get data through one project, dubbed the Covid-19 Mobility Data Network.
PHOTO: ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
By Byron Tau
Updated March 28, 2020 6:50 pm ET
WASHINGTON—Government officials across the U.S. are using location data from millions of cellphones in a bid to better understand the movements of Americans during the coronavirus pandemic and how they may be affecting the spread of the disease.
The federal government, through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state and local governments have started to receive analyses about the presence and movement of people in certain areas of geographic interest drawn from cellphone data, people familiar with the matter said. The data comes from the mobile advertising industry rather than cellphone carriers.
The aim is to create a portal for federal, state and local officials that contains geolocation data in what could be as many as 500 cities across the U.S., one of the people said, to help plan the epidemic response.
The data—which is stripped of identifying information like the name of a phone’s owner—could help officials learn how coronavirus is spreading around the country and help blunt its advance. It shows which retail establishments, parks and other public spaces are still drawing crowds that could risk accelerating the transmission of the virus, according to people familiar with the matter. In one such case, researchers found that New Yorkers were congregating in large numbers in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and handed that information over to local authorities, one person said. Warning notices have been posted at parks in New York City, but they haven’t been closed.
The data can also reveal general levels of compliance with stay-at-home or shelter-in-place orders, according to experts inside and outside government, and help measure the pandemic’s economic impact by revealing the drop-off in retail customers at stores, decreases in automobile miles driven and other economic metrics.
The CDC has started to get analyses based on location data through through an ad hoc coalition of tech companies and data providers—all working in conjunction with the White House and others in government, people said.
The CDC and the White House didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The growing reliance on mobile phone location data continues to raise concerns about privacy protections, especially when programs are run by or commissioned by governments.
Wolfie Christl, a privacy activist and researcher, said the location-data industry was “covidwashing” what are generally privacy-invading products.
“In the light of the emerging disaster, it may be appropriate to make use of aggregate analytics based on consumer data in some cases, even if data is being gathered secretly or illegally by companies,” said Mr. Christl. “As true anonymization of location data is nearly impossible, strong legal safeguards are mandatory.” The safeguards should limit how the data can be used and ensure it isn’t used later for other purposes, he said.
Privacy advocates are concerned that even anonymized data could be used in combination with other publicly accessible information to identify and track individuals.
Some companies in the U.S. location-data industry have made their data or analysis available for the public to see or made their raw data available for researchers or governments. San Francisco-based LotaData launched a public portal analyzing movement patterns within Italy that could help authorities plan for outbreaks and plans additional portals for Spain, California and New York. The company Unacast launched a public “social distancing scoreboard” that uses location data to evaluate localities on how well their population is doing at following stay-at-home orders.
Other state and local governments too have begun to commission their own studies and analyses from private companies. Foursquare Labs Inc., one of the largest location-data players, said it is in discussions with numerous state and local governments about use of its data.
Researchers and governments around the world have used a patchwork of authorities and tactics to collect mobile phone data—sometimes looking for voluntary compliance from either companies or individuals, and in other cases using laws meant for terrorism or other emergencies to collect vast amounts of data on citizens to combat the coronavirus threat.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have launched a project to track volunteer Covid-19 patients through a mobile phone app. Telecom carriers in Germany, Austria, Spain, Belgium, the U.K. and other countries have given data over to authorities to help combat the pandemic. Israel’s intelligence agencies were tapped to use antiterrorism phone-tracking technology to map infections.
In the U.S., so far, the data being used has largely been drawn from the advertising industry. The mobile marketing industry has billions of geographic data points on hundreds of millions of U.S. cell mobile devices—mostly drawn from applications that users have installed on their phones and allowed to track their location. Huge troves of this advertising data are available for sale.
The industry is largely unregulated under existing privacy laws because consumers have opted-in to tracking and because the data doesn’t contain names or addresses—each consumer is represented by an alphanumeric string.
Cellphone carriers also have access to massive amounts of geolocation data, which is granted much stricter privacy protection under U.S. law than in most other countries. The largest U.S. carriers, including AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., say they have not been approached by the government to provide location data, according to spokespeople. There have been discussions about trying to obtain U.S. telecom data for this purpose, however the legality of such a move isn’t clear.
—Patience Haggin, Drew FitzGerald and Sarah Krouse contributed to this article.
Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
The Covid-19 Mobility Data Network is working primarily with state and local governments. An earlier version of this story incorrectly said it was providing location data insights to the federal government. (March 28, 2020)
-
Washington State OKs Facial Recognition Law Seen as National Model
Microsoft-backed bill sets limits but doesn’t ban the technology
Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said the new law balanced ‘the interests of law-enforcement, the business community and individuals’ right to privacy.’
PHOTO: AMANDA SNYDER/PRESS POOL
By Ryan Tracy
March 31, 2020 4:34 pm ET
SAVE
PRINT
TEXT
Washington state adopted a Microsoft Corp. -backed law enshrining the most detailed regulations of facial recognition in the U.S., potentially serving as a model for other states as use of the technology grows.
Gov. Jay Inslee signed the law Tuesday allowing government agencies to use facial recognition, with restrictions designed to ensure it isn’t deployed for broad surveillance or tracking innocent people.
The law makes Washington’s policy stricter than many states that don’t have any laws governing the technology, but more permissive than at least seven U.S. municipalities that have blocked government from using it out of concerns about privacy violations and bias.
Passage of the law is a win for Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., near Seattle, and which had lobbied in favor of it. Cloud providers such as Microsoft and other technology firms see a multibillion-dollar opportunity as businesses and governments apply facial recognition to identify customers, solve crimes, control access to buildings and more. Proposed bans on the technology threaten that opportunity.
Other tech companies say they support regulation of facial recognition, but generally haven’t been as active as Microsoft in promoting legislation. Seattle-based cloud computing giant Amazon.com Inc. has called for national standards but hasn’t said much publicly on the facial recognition law in its home state.
Related Video
Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Facial Recognition Technology
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
UP NEXT
Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Facial Recognition Technology
Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Facial Recognition Technology
Facial recognition is going mainstream. The technology is increasingly used by law-enforcement agencies and in schools, casinos and retail stores, spurring privacy concerns. In this episode of Moving Upstream, WSJ’s Jason Bellini tests out the technology at an elementary school in Seattle and visits a company that claims its algorithm can identify potential terrorists by their facial features alone.
There are signs the Washington model is catching on in other states. Lawmakers in California, Maryland, South Dakota and Idaho introduced bills this year with text mirroring the Washington state bill, word-for-word in some sections, according to Quorum Analytics Inc., a software company that tracks legislation. Those bills haven’t advanced.
Microsoft has helped promote the legislation in other states. In Idaho, Republican State Rep. Britt Raybould modeled a facial-recognition proposal on a draft of the Washington bill she received from Microsoft after reaching out to the company, she said in an interview. “It’s a starting point,” she said of the Idaho bill.
In Hawaii, a lobbyist for Microsoft was circulating a draft of the Washington bill late last year, according to the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which says it received a copy from the lobbyist by email.
A Microsoft spokesman noted the company has been openly advocating for facial recognition regulations since 2018.
“Washington state’s new law breaks through what at times has been a polarizing debate,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post Tuesday. “This balanced approach ensures that facial recognition can be used as a tool to protect the public, but only in ways that respect fundamental rights and serve the public interest.”
The idea of regulation didn’t catch on in Hawaii. Instead, lawmakers there were considering a moratorium on government use of facial recognition before postponing this year’s legislative session amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Under the new Washington law, if a government agency wants to use facial recognition, it has to first give public notice, hold at least three community meetings, and publish a report outlining the technology’s potential impact on civil liberties.
Police could use facial recognition for ongoing surveillance or real-time identification of people but they will need a warrant or court order first.
The law also includes checks on the technology. It can’t be used to make significant government decisions without “meaningful human review,” and government employees must be trained on the technology’s limitations.
A company providing it to the government has to allow for independent third-party testing of the system, checking for accuracy or bias. Washington state Sen. Joe Nguyen, a Democrat and the bill’s main sponsor, said that provision has national implications because problems identified in his state will have to be fixed elsewhere, too. In addition to being a part-time legislator, Mr. Nguyen works as a senior program manager at Microsoft.
Some in Washington state have criticized the law. Jennifer Lee, technology and liberty project manager for the ACLU’s local chapter, says the bill gives the government too much leeway. She noted one provision that allows police to use the technology without a warrant if “exigent circumstances exist.”
“We need a temporary ban on face surveillance, not ongoing use that allows beta testing of face surveillance on the most impacted and vulnerable communities,” Ms. Lee said.
The Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs also lobbied against the bill, saying it placed too many bureaucratic requirements on law enforcement agencies.
“There is a version of facial recognition regulations that we are okay with,” but this law “hinders our ability to keep people safe,” said James McMahan, the group’s policy director. He pointed to a requirement that police obtain a court order before a common use of facial recognition: Identifying a missing or deceased person.
As he signed the law, Mr. Inslee, a Democrat, said it “provides state and local governments a set of guidelines around facial recognition technology while balancing the interests of law-enforcement, the business community and individuals’ right to privacy.”
Write to Ryan Tracy at ryan.tracy@wsj.com
-
msft facial recognition
who the heck are they to do this to us?
Screw Gates, Mr pandemic expert
)I know he just resigned From BOD, so what he is pushing this stuff )
do we the people EVER have.a say in this.
yeah right it will solve crimes
how about we use it to identify illegals?
-
https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/04/some-shirts-hide-you-from-cameras-but-will-anyone-wear-them/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
-
https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2020/04/documents-reveal-feds-are-excited-to.html
Lovely.
-
["https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2020/04/documents-reveal-feds-are-excited-to.html
Lovely"
meet the Ivanka and JayRod backed companies who just want to help out and build a surveillance state for corona and they offer their services
*for free*:
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/top-news/meet-companies-poised-build-kushner-backed-coronavirus-surveillance-system/. ]
My nephew says they go to JayRod to get things done and he does so they like him.
Surely all the lobbyists and insiders do the same.
Trump wants to free states from restrictions.
But then his kids are gung ho in increasing the surveillance state behind the scenes - which takes away freedoms.
-
R.I.P. Our Right of Privacy. It is so violated, so gone.
I can still hear Senator/Murderer Ted Kennedy taking US Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork to task over the unenumerated right of privacy in the US constitution. Bork's refusal to connect this with the right to slaughter your young became the disqualifier that sent him packing. He and his ilk could never be confirmed by a US Senate, as being Borked became a verb in 1977.
Ironic to the politics of Borking is that Bork died a private man in 2012 when Democrats controlled the White House and Senate, and his eventual replacement Justice Kennedy retired in 2018 when Republicans controlled the White House and Senate. Tough luck.
Anyway, now you have to be a right wing kook to believe in a right of privacy?
When the SWAT team busted up my property over my tenant's boyfriend (alleged) complicity in a murder, none of his contacts knew where she lived, where he slept. But Apple, Google, Verizon or whoever knew where he was, and then so did the police.
China stole the credit reports of 145 million Americans, two thirds of the adults in America. https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/02/10/chinese-government-hackers-charged-with-massive-equifax-hack/#48e6d5b461d6
Do you remember giving Expedia permission to hold your data, or Google, Facebook et al permission to track your everything until it is eventually hacked or just given to the government?
Surveillance is definitely a possible tool in the fight of the pandemic. Google maps already seems to know where every car and every driver is, and who is in your car, who sleeps on the other side of your bed. In the interest of health, how 'bout we make the new CV surveillance be an opt-in system, instead of just proceeding clandestinely.
-
There are ways to opt out.
R.I.P. Our Right of Privacy. It is so violated, so gone.
I can still hear Senator/Murderer Ted Kennedy taking US Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork to task over the unenumerated right of privacy in the US constitution. Bork's refusal to connect this with the right to slaughter your young became the disqualifier that sent him packing. He and his ilk could never be confirmed by a US Senate, as being Borked became a verb in 1977.
Ironic to the politics of Borking is that Bork died a private man in 2012 when Democrats controlled the White House and Senate, and his eventual replacement Justice Kennedy retired in 2018 when Republicans controlled the White House and Senate. Tough luck.
Anyway, now you have to be a right wing kook to believe in a right of privacy?
When the SWAT team busted up my property over my tenant's boyfriend (alleged) complicity in a murder, none of his contacts knew where she lived, where he slept. But Apple, Google, Verizon or whoever knew where he was, and then so did the police.
China stole the credit reports of 145 million Americans, two thirds of the adults in America. https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/02/10/chinese-government-hackers-charged-with-massive-equifax-hack/#48e6d5b461d6
Do you remember giving Expedia permission to hold your data, or Google, Facebook et al permission to track your everything until it is eventually hacked or just given to the government?
Surveillance is definitely a possible tool in the fight of the pandemic. Google maps already seems to know where every car and every driver is, and who is in your car, who sleeps on the other side of your bed. In the interest of health, how 'bout we make the new CV surveillance be an opt-in system, instead of just proceeding clandestinely.
-
FB just blocked my posting of GM's Reply #1158.
-
FB just blocked my posting of GM's Reply #1158.
Gee, I wonder why...
-
FB just blocked my posting of GM's Reply #1158.
Gee, I wonder why...
(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/1747e96205f9271b.jpeg)
-
https://www.cnet.com/news/pandemic-drone-test-flights-will-monitor-social-distancing/
it is not too far off to expect a device that can monitor out thoughts
and if not PC enough also gave a gatling gun to dispose of us
or another type device to zap us any time we think out of line.
That would be the lefts goal
-
(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/1588070540417.png?w=500&h=501)
-
https://longreads.com/2019/06/21/nothing-kept-me-up-at-night-the-way-the-gorgon-stare-did/
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
-
Coronavirus Demands a Privacy Law
Silicon Valley’s role in contact tracing and social-distancing enforcement has Americans worried.
By Christine Wilson
May 13, 2020 6:58 pm ET
Reopening the economy and returning to “normal life” in the absence of a Covid-19 vaccine may be possible, we are told, with a combination of widespread testing and contact tracing. But these solutions will depend heavily on technology, and Silicon Valley doesn’t have the best record when it comes to protecting consumer privacy. Congress must step into the breach with federal privacy legislation establishing guardrails for tech companies’ handling of our most personal information.
The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from government overreach, but the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test complicates the relationship between government action and commercial data collection. Georgetown Law professor Paul Ohm has observed that “the dramatic expansion of technologically-fueled corporate surveillance of our private lives automatically expands police surveillance too,” given how “the Supreme Court has construed the reasonable expectation of privacy test and the third-party doctrine.”
How Pelosi Spends $3 Trillion
SUBSCRIBE
Across the country, people are being fined and jailed for not following social-distancing guidelines. It’s one thing for the cops to break up a backyard barbecue because of a neighbor’s complaint, but if police rely on data collection rather than direct observation to enforce social-distancing rules, their actions may run afoul of the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court has reined in warrantless tracking through Global Positioning System devices placed on vehicles and through cellphone data.
Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Poland have required people infected with or exposed to the novel coronavirus to download smartphone apps so the government can make sure they are following quarantine restrictions. India recently mandated use of a contact tracing app for office workers.
While the U.S. has yet to impose similar mandates, tech companies have begun collecting pandemic-related data. Facebook is joining with universities to distribute a symptom survey to users that will provide “precise data” that “will help governments and public health officials . . . make decisions,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said. Apple and Google are working together to support opt-in contact-tracing apps from public health authorities.
But a Washington Post poll found that only 40% of respondents were willing and able to use such an app; half of the polled smartphone users don’t trust tech companies to protect the anonymity of users who test positive for Covid-19. Moreover, a new Brookings Institution report questions the benefits of contact tracing via apps, which may be less accurate than human tracers and potentially vulnerable to hacking.
ILLUSTRATION: BARBARA KELLEY
The Federal Trade Commission has long used its broad consumer protection authority to safeguard Americans’ privacy and data security, but its specific privacy authority is limited. I have called on Congress to pass privacy legislation that would provide more transparency to consumers and greater certainty to businesses about the types of data that can be collected and how those data can be used and shared.
Comprehensive legislation is needed to help companies navigate issues such as accountability, risk management, data minimization, deidentification and vendor management. With established legal boundaries, companies would be better equipped to determine when the government is asking them to cross the line for the public good, and whether they should require a subpoena or inform customers before turning over data.
In the absence of baseline privacy legislation, some coronavirus researchers have justified their use of mobile-device data by citing customers’ prior consent to data collection. Last week, five Republican senators led by Roger Wicker of Mississippi introduced a bill that would require tech companies to get “affirmative express consent” before collecting Covid-19 data. Congress will decide whether this is the right approach, but the assumption that consumers have already given informed consent for quarantine-compliance monitoring is unsupportable. Cellphone users often don’t read the fine print. They have little understanding of the actual scope of how their data are collected, analyzed and shared.
Covid-19 presents new and complex choices about information collection, dissemination and use. Care is required, because privacy and data-security missteps can cause people irrevocable harm. Companies must be transparent with consumers, assess and manage risk in collecting and using data, and share only those data necessary to achieve stated goals. Similar principles of necessity and proportionality should guide governments when seeking private industry information.
But why take chances? Samuel Johnson wrote, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” With the health, privacy and Fourth Amendment rights of Americans at stake, congressional minds should concentrate on turning draft privacy bills into comprehensive legislation, providing guidance and clarity now and in the years to come. Otherwise, with mobile devices acting as “invisible policemen,” Justice William O. Douglas’s warning of “a bald invasion of privacy, far worse than the general warrants prohibited by the Fourth Amendment,” may come to pass.
Ms. Wilson is a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.
-
Coronavirus Demands a Privacy Law
Silicon Valley’s role in contact tracing and social-distancing enforcement has Americans worried.
By Christine Wilson
May 13, 2020 6:58 pm ET
...
Ms. Wilson is a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.
Refreshing to see a person in a position of government power warn of the dangers of runaway government powers.
Just to pick out one point: “the dramatic expansion of technologically-fueled corporate surveillance of our private lives automatically expands police surveillance too,”
[Ostensibly] because of coronavirus, government wants universal tracking powers of al people. That means this is exactly the time to identify what privacy rights we must have, and frame how we will protect them. Why not take this moment in history and pass and ratify the amendment that draws the line.
-
"Ostensibly] because of coronavirus, government wants universal tracking powers of al people. That means this is exactly the time to identify what privacy rights we must have, and frame how we will protect them. Why not take this moment in history and pass and ratify the amendment that draws the line."
YES!
Seems like Josh Hawley is one of the few I know of who is going in this direction
The tech control over our lives has been a runaway train
and they are getting in bed and intimate lovers with government (pentagon other agencies , and now Gates with the corona thing)
This is the WORST possible combination I can dream of .
I guess Bezos could run for president ...........
-
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-govt-now-flying-mq-9-reaper-drone-over-minneapolis-riots-worsen
-
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-govt-now-flying-mq-9-reaper-drone-over-minneapolis-riots-worsen
We had a helicopter hovering over where I was today. It could have been news crew or Hwy Petrol or Natl guard. I wonder if the have enough long range detailed video to investigate what's happening below.
-
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-govt-now-flying-mq-9-reaper-drone-over-minneapolis-riots-worsen
We had a helicopter hovering over where I was today. It could have been news crew or Hwy Petrol or Natl guard. I wonder if the have enough long range detailed video to investigate what's happening below.
Generally surveillance aircraft (Manned/unmanned) will be at such a high altitude you won't see or hear them.
-
A case for banning facial recognition
Ziv Schneider
By Shira Ovide
Facial recognition software might be the world’s most divisive technology.
Law enforcement agencies and some companies use it to identify suspects and victims by matching photos and video with databases like driver’s license records. But civil liberties groups say facial recognition contributes to privacy erosion, reinforces bias against black people and is prone to misuse.
San Francisco and a major provider of police body cameras have barred its use by law enforcement, and IBM on Monday backed away from its work in this area. Some proposals to restructure police departments call for tighter restrictions on their use of facial recognition.
Timnit Gebru, a leader of Google’s ethical artificial intelligence team, explained why she believes that facial recognition is too dangerous to be used right now for law enforcement purposes. These are edited excerpts from our virtual discussion at the Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society on Monday.
Ovide: What are your concerns about facial recognition?
Gebru: I collaborated with Joy Buolamwini at the M.I.T. Media Lab on an analysis that found very high disparities in error rates [in facial identification systems], especially between lighter-skinned men and darker-skinned women. In melanoma screenings, imagine that there’s a detection technology that doesn’t work for people with darker skin.
Continue reading the main story
I also realized that even perfect facial recognition can be misused. I’m a black woman living in the U.S. who has dealt with serious consequences of racism. Facial recognition is being used against the black community. Baltimore police during the Freddie Gray protests used facial recognition to identify protesters by linking images to social media profiles.
But a police officer or eyewitness could also look at surveillance footage and mug shots and misidentify someone as Jim Smith. Is software more accurate or less biased than humans?
That depends. Our analysis showed that for many, facial recognition was way less accurate than humans.
The other problem is something called automation bias. If your intuition tells you that an image doesn’t look like Smith, but the computer model tells you that it is him with 99 percent accuracy, you’re more likely to believe that model.
There’s also an imbalance of power. Facial recognition can be completely accurate, but it can still be used in a way that is detrimental to certain groups of people.
The combination of overreliance on technology, misuse and lack of transparency — we don’t know how widespread the use of this software is — is dangerous.
A maker of police body cameras recently discussed using artificial intelligence to analyze video footage and possibly flag law-enforcement incidents for review. What’s your take on using technology in that way?
My gut reaction is that a lot of people in technology have the urge to jump on a tech solution without listening to people who have been working with community leaders, the police and others proposing solutions to reform the police.
Do you see a way to use facial recognition for law enforcement and security responsibly?
It should be banned at the moment. I don’t know about the future.
Tip of the Week
Stopping trackers in their tracks
Brian X. Chen, a consumer technology writer at the The New York Times, writes in to explain ways that emails can identify when and where you click, and how to dial back the tracking.
Google’s Gmail is so popular in large part because its artificial intelligence is effective at filtering out spam. But it does little to combat another nuisance: email tracking.
The trackers come in many forms, like an invisible piece of software inserted into an email or a hyperlink embedded inside text. They are frequently used to detect when someone opens an email and even a person’s location when the message is opened.
When used legitimately, email trackers help businesses determine what types of marketing messages to send to you, and how frequently to communicate with you. This emailed newsletter has some trackers as well to help us gain insight into the topics you like to read about, among other metrics.
But from a privacy perspective, email tracking may feel unfair. You didn’t opt in to being tracked, and there’s no simple way to opt out.
Fortunately, many email trackers can be thwarted by disabling images from automatically loading in Gmail messages. Here’s how to do that:
• Inside Gmail.com, look in the upper right corner for the icon of a gear, click on it, and choose the “Settings” option.
• In the settings window, scroll down to “Images.” Select “Ask before displaying external images.”
With this setting enabled, you can prevent tracking software from loading automatically. If you choose, you can agree to load the images. This won’t stop all email tracking, but it’s better than nothing.
-
second post
June 25, 2020
When the police think software is magic
Brian Matthew Hart
By Shira Ovide
A lot of technology is pretty dumb, but we think it’s smart. My colleague Kashmir Hill showed the human toll of this mistake.
Her article detailed how Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, a black man in Michigan, was accused of shoplifting on the basis of flawed police work that relied on faulty facial recognition technology. The software showed Williams’s driver’s license photo among possible matches with the man in the surveillance images, leading to Williams’s arrest in a crime he didn’t commit.
(In response to Kash’s article, prosecutors apologized for what happened to Williams and said he could have his case expunged.)
Kash talked to me about how this happened, and what the arrest showed about the limits and accuracy of facial recognition technology.
Shira: What a mess up. How did this happen?
Kash: The police are supposed to use facial recognition identification only as an investigative lead. But instead, people treat facial recognition as a kind of magic. And that’s why you get a case where someone was arrested based on flawed software combined with inadequate police work.
But humans, not just computers, misidentify people in criminal cases.
Absolutely. Witness testimony is also very troubling. That has been a selling point for many facial recognition technologies.
Is the problem that the facial recognition technology is inaccurate?
That’s one problem. A federal study of facial recognition algorithms found them to be biased and to wrongly identify people of color at higher rates than white people. The study included the two algorithms used in the image search that led to Williams’s arrest.
Sometimes the algorithm is good and sometimes it’s bad, and there’s not always a great way to tell the difference. And there’s usually no requirement for vetting the technology from policymakers, the government or law enforcement.
What’s the broader problem?
Companies that sell facial recognition software say it doesn’t give a perfect “match.” It gives a score of how likely the facial images in databases match the one you search. The technology companies say none of this is probable cause for arrest. (At least, that’s how they talk about it with a reporter for The New York Times.)
But on the ground, officers see an image of a suspect next to a photo of the likeliest match, and it seems like the correct answer. I have seen facial recognition work well with some high-quality close-up images. But usually, police officers have grainy videos or a sketch, and computers don’t work well in those cases.
It feels as if we know computers are flawed, but we still believe the answers they spit out?
I wrote about the owner of a Kansas farm who was harassed by law enforcement and random visitors because of a glitch in software that maps people’s locations from their internet addresses. People incorrectly thought the mapping software was flawless. Facial recognition has the same problem. People don’t drill down into the technology, and they don’t read the fine print about the inaccuracies.
Hey, big tech: What about big structural change?
Tech companies shouldn’t say they want to help fight entrenched global problems like climate change and racial injustice without taking a hard look at how their products make things worse.
That was the point that Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times, made about Facebook, Google and other internet companies that have proclaimed their support for the Black Lives Matter movement and announced donations, changes to their work force and other supportive measures in recent weeks.
These are good steps. But as Kevin wrote and discussed on “The Daily” podcast, the companies haven’t tackled the ways that their internet hangouts have been created to reward exaggerated viewpoints that undermine movements like Black Lives Matter. They also haven’t addressed how their rewarding of boundary-pushing online behavior has contributed to racial division.
Kevin said the tech companies’ actions were like fast-food chains getting together to fight obesity “by donating to a vegan food co-op, rather than by lowering their calorie counts.”
I have similar feelings about Amazon’s creation of a $2 billion fund to back technologies that seek to combat climate change. Previously, Amazon had announced pledges to reduce its own carbon emissions by, for example, shifting its package-delivery fleet to electric vehicles. Again, great. But.
It’s not clear that Amazon’s efforts can fully offset the carbon emissions of delivering packages fast, or shipping bottles of laundry detergent across the country, or letting people try to return stuff without thinking twice.
In short, Amazon’s carbon pledges might be nibbling around the edges of a problem to avoid considering how the company has shaped our shopping behaviors in an environmentally harmful way.
Big structural changes are incredibly hard — for the companies and us. I’m not saying big tech companies necessarily have an obligation to fight racism or environmental destruction. But the companies say that’s what they want to do. They might not be able to make a big difference without fundamentally changing how they operate.
Before we go …
• Great! Now do more: Google said it would start automatically deleting logs of people’s web and app activity and data on our location after 18 months, my colleague Dai Wakabayashi reported. This change applies only to new accounts, but it’s a healthy step to put some limits on the stockpiles of information Google has about us. Here’s one more idea: Collect less data on us in the first place.
• The trustbusters are working hard on Google: Attorney General William Barr is unusually involved in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Google abuses its power, my colleagues David McCabe and Cecilia Kang write. (Here is my explanation of what’s happening with Google.) Barr’s interest shows the government is taking seriously its look into the power of big tech companies, but it also risks criticism that the investigation has more political than legal motivations.
• Tilting at windmills, but … President Trump’s campaign is considering drawing more supporters to its own smartphone app or other alternatives to big internet hangouts like Facebook and Twitter, The Wall Street Journal reported. There’s no chance Mr. Trump or his campaign can ditch big internet sites, but they are worried about social media policies that have limited some of their inflammatory posts. They share the fears of many people and organizations, including news outlets, that wish they relied less on the large internet hangouts to get noticed.
Hugs to this
It’s eerie, sweet and funny to see this Barcelona musical performance in a concert hall with houseplants filling the seats. (The plants will be donated to health care workers.)
We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com.
Get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday; please sign up here.
Continue reading the main story
Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance.
You received this email because you signed up for On Tech with Shira Ovide from The New York Times.
To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences.
Subscribe to The Times
Connect with us on:
Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices
The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018
-
https://reason.com/2020/07/17/a-pandemic-of-surveillance/
-
https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/police-surveillance-blm-protests/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=email&tp=i-1NGB-Et-PmV-13zANt-1c-gcVB-1c-13yi7Q-l4v2c6VKrt-NKEYj
-
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/05/1006008/ai-face-recognition-hack-misidentifies-person/
-
second
https://theintercept.com/2020/07/31/protests-surveillance-stingrays-dirtboxes-phone-tracking/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
-
HT GM
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/inside-one-big-brothers-location-harvesting-contractors-tracking-hundreds-millions
-
https://www.agweb.com/article/government-cameras-hidden-private-property-welcome-open-fields
-
HT GM:
Got privacy? Dump your tracking devices
« Reply #65 on: August 20, 2020, 11:25:53 PM »
QuoteModifyRemoveSplit Topic
https://lbry.tv/@RobBraxmanTech:6/dump-phone:8
-
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/new-technology-will-dangerously-expand-government-spying-citizens?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter
-
Hat tip GM
https://futurism.com/new-satellite-buildings-day-night
-
https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/12/18/chinas-alibaba-group-admits-made-uyghur-alert-facial-recognition-system/
-
https://www.startpage.com/privacy-please/privacy-advocate-articles/private-search-engine-comparison?fbclid=IwAR0wS416Yf-1O5XzDaCQYi0uBVGFBrmw1OHpDNx064vQKQ0lFITfsVykOB4
-
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9178181/US-military-spies-paid-Americans-cell-phone-data-without-warrant.html
-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/JOKYLbofTRy5/
Welcome to the soft genocide.
-
HT to GM:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7adn9/car-location-data-telematics-us-military-ulysses-group
-
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/digital-trails-how-fbi-identifying-tracking-rounding-dissidents?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter
-
https://odysee.com/@RobBraxmanTech:6
-
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-157_8mjp.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2uW5wb7VRR6wpCC8hQY1NOdfrPS-oo5pFT8OMbCH7iUDZlOGW9OzPAU9o
-
Have not had a chance to watch these yet, but they come to me in a way that makes me want to do so so I put them down here so I can circle back to them when I do have the time to do so-- notes from anyone who gets to them before I do so would be greatly appreciated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3jZ_7D9otc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G10E_eo7Q00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmnaVhAliPU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYVpvXNiYi8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLc8V3TneqA&t=1s
-
https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/auto-news/1032062-ford-motor-co-accused-of-violating-privacy-law-by-storing-drivers-private-conversations-and-releasing-them-to-cops-and-a-private-company-a-new-class-action-lawsuit-alleges/
-
How Congress Can Protect Your Data Privacy
Democrats and Republicans largely agree, so legislators need to do their job.
By Jon Leibowitz
Feb. 14, 2022 6:21 pm ET
Although a surprisingly wide range of consumer organizations and business groups are urging lawmakers to act, Congress has shown itself unable to move forward with consumer-privacy legislation. Unless it does so, the Federal Trade Commission and the states may end up using other tools to give Americans more control over personal information.
When I chaired the FTC, I would not have supported such action. Soon, I may. State and agency efforts cannot be as comprehensive as a national law and, depending on how they are written, may raise constitutional concerns. Still, a patchwork of consumer-privacy statutes and regulations is better than none at all.
OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH
WSJ Opinion Potomac Watch
Truckers Against Covid-19 Mandates
SUBSCRIBE
In 2012, long before Europe passed the General Data Protection Regulation and California enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act, the FTC released a report titled “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change.” We recognized that industry self-regulation of privacy was not working for American consumers. We urged Congress to pass a law giving Americans the right to opt out of most corporate data collection. And in the case of sensitive data—such as consumer health and safety information—companies would have to obtain an explicit opt-in, before collecting information from consumers.
In the years since, surveillance capitalism has only gotten worse. Despite disclosures involving Cambridge Analytica, dozens of data breaches of large corporations and recent whistleblower revelations involving Facebook, legislation has languished.
NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP
Opinion: Morning Editorial Report
All the day's Opinion headlines.
PREVIEW
SUBSCRIBED
Democrats and Republicans agree on the vast majority of what should be in such a bill. Unlike much of American politics today, protecting consumer privacy has never been a partisan issue. Recent polls by Morning Consult have found that 86% of Democrats and 81% of Republicans believe Congress should make privacy law a priority, and that bipartisan majorities favor limits on the use of browsing history for targeted advertising.
Members of Congress largely agree on following the FTC approach, and leading Democratic and Republican drafts in recent years look more alike than different. Support for strengthening privacy protection for children is even stronger.
Only two issues currently divide lawmakers: whether a federal measure should pre-empt state laws, and whether to let consumers themselves initiate lawsuits. On the first, the answer is simple: Pass a federal law stronger than any of the existing state laws and pre-empt only direct conflicts. That is easily achievable because the three state laws that have passed—in Virginia, Colorado and California—are either weak or riddled with loopholes. Even the strongest of the trio, California’s, largely limits only the transferring of data and not its collection. On the second, Congress should develop a compromise: Authorize a private right of action, but one that allows consumers to be compensated only for demonstrable harms.
While they are at it, lawmakers should raise the age protection of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to 16 from 12, so parents can stop companies from creating online dossiers through the devices used by their teenage children. Lawmakers should also prohibit companies from using algorithms in discriminatory ways.
There is a glimmer of hope in Congress. Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are trading drafts and seem close to marking up a consensus privacy bill. The White House is said to be interested in pushing the process forward.
If Congress again fails to act, the FTC appears poised to move forward on consumer-privacy regulation. It may go further than Congress by banning the corporate collection of some data and requiring an opt-in for the rest. But a regulation isn’t an optimal approach, because under the commission’s anachronistic rulemaking authority, it will take the FTC years to finalize a privacy rule. Even then, the regulation would have to meet a statutory definition of unfairness, which is difficult to do and will be tested by a conservative judiciary on appeal.
Having said that, if my fellow commissioners in 2012 knew then what we know now—that, bafflingly, Congress would be unable to pass privacy legislation despite widespread agreement over what should go in it—we would have started a rulemaking. We would never have waited almost a decade for congressional action.
Failure in Congress will also set off a cascade of differing state privacy laws, possibly with conflicting standards that consumers won’t understand. Last year nearly two dozen states introduced some form of data-privacy legislation, and state lawmakers who have waited for Congress to act are losing patience.
All American consumers deserve the same strong privacy protections wherever they live, work or travel. Because internet-transmitted data knows no state boundaries, we need a nationwide solution to a nationwide problem.
The best approach is for Congress to do its job.
Mr. Leibowitz was a commissioner at the FTC (2004-13) and chairman (2009-13).
-
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/germany-street-view/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2qrfjO7ty7-oLH79EabtnzeeQQ1K0FlSSk9LQbZD0CkCoGyIBQ3FYiIH0#Echobox=1648243516-1
-
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/25/italy-to-pilot-social-credit-system-for-climate-friendly-behavior/
coming to a European and North American country near you (us)
-
Italy Announces Rollout of Dystopian ‘Social Credit System’ to “Conserve Resources” – First of its Kind in the EU – Compliant Citizens Will Be Rewarded for “Good Behavior”By Julian Conradson
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Social credit scores (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System) are already in use in various places around the world, but nowhere more than in the communist hell hole that is China. The dystopian measurement acts in a similar fashion to a traditional credit score (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score), however, as the name indicates, one’s score has little to do with their financial prospects or ability to pay off debt on time – social scores are all about your level of compliance to the regime and acceptance of the approved narrative.
For example, if social credit scores were in full effect in the United States and you were to donate money to a company like the National Rifle Association (NRA) or buy stocks in oil – pretty much anything deemed far-right or environmentally damaging by the establishment – your score would take a hit. Too many hits and, you guessed it, there goes your purchasing power and ability.
With this dystopian coercion tool being used in an authoritarian dictatorship like China, where there is no such thing as individual rights or free speech, it could be easily assumed that this system would not be compatible with the United States, or even the West more broadly, but sadly that’s not the case.
Governments across the western world are exploring using this tool, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, which proved that the government can obtain almost limitless power in a crisis and set the stage for the next phase of the World Economic Forum’s project 2030 – where the plan is that you will “own nothing and be happy.”
As of right now, there is no official government-sponsored social credit system in the West, but that will change in the coming months thanks to Italy (https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/04/22/a-social-credit-system-aimed-at-modifying-climate-change-behaviors-is-being-deployed-in-italy/), which announced (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html) the rollout of its new rewards-based program that aims to modify people’s climate change behavior by assigning a score based on their compliance – the first program of it’s kind (https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/04/22/a-social-credit-system-aimed-at-modifying-climate-change-behaviors-is-being-deployed-in-italy/) in the EU.
The program will kick off (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html) its pilot starting in the fall of 2022 in the large metropolitan city of Bologna. Citizens who comply with the radical climate change agenda by displaying “good behavior,” such as correctly recycling or using public transportation, will be rewarded with cryptocurrency and discounts to local retailers, according to local newspaper Bologna Today (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html).
Enrollees will be given a “smart citizen wallet” where their rewards can be accessed. The higher one’s score, correlating with good behavioral changes, will allow them access to more benefits.
At first, enrollment into the social credit score will be optional, however, there are justified concerns that the program will become mandatory in the future, not unlike the dystopian vaccine passport which has become a staple of everyday life in the EU.
From The National Pulse (https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/04/22/a-social-credit-system-aimed-at-modifying-climate-change-behaviors-is-being-deployed-in-italy/):
“Given the increasing interest by the European Union, some fear it is only a matter of time before more regions and nations will implement similar methods to solve ‘social issues’. Germany (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/22/new-id-law-aims-to-help-reduce-digital-shyness-in-germany) and Austria (https://tkp.at/2022/03/15/oesterreichs-naechster-schritt-in-die-totale-digitale-kontrolle-id-austria/) (ID Austria) have already accelerated their respective digital ID plans. Both countries are introducing new platforms to integrate more public services and IDs, digitize mail, and even national passports (https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/id-austria.html). These new measures have been introduced under the auspicious of solving ‘bureaucratic problems and [saving] resources.’
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has also expressed keenness
(https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_20_1655) over introducing ‘EU ID’, which would integrate national IDs with internet sign-ups. In 2021 she said:
(https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EFIs-oL1c4g) ‘Every time an App or website asks us to create a new digital identity, or to easily log via a big platform, we have no idea what happens with our data. That is why the Commission will propose a secure European e-identity. One that we trust and that any citizen can use anywhere in Europe to do anything from paying taxes to renting bicycles.'”
To assuage fears of the social credit score morphing into a mandatory obligation like the vax pass, Massimo Bugani, the councilor for the digital agenda in the northern city, claimed (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html) that the system would not be tied to social media or other forms of online identification and would strictly be used as a tool to encourage “good behavior” that is deemed helpful to the environment.
The focus of the program is to “save resources” and increase compliance, the official added.
From Bologna Today (https://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/piano-digitale-comune-bologna.html):
"Isn’t there a fear of an invasion of privacy in all of this? “The interested citizen – Bugani specifies – must of course give his availability, through an application, and no one will be forced to participate in the rewards mechanism. I believe, however, that many will join”. In the meantime, as regards the ‘not very digital’, a permanent table will be opened from 6 April with various associations to bridge the gap for over 65s.”
Considering the tyrannical power grab by governments across the world over the past two years, the claim that social credit scores like this are simply benign should definitely be taken with a grain of salt – or maybe even a full-blown Paul Revere ride.
‘The Globalists are coming!’
-
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/06/united-kingdom-former-police-officer-jailed-sharing-offensive-george-floyd-meme-whatsapp-group/
-
Supreme Court Rules IRS Can Secretly Grab Bank Records of Outside Parties
The IRS building is seen in Washington on Sept. 28, 2020. (Erin Scott/Reuters)
The IRS building is seen in Washington on Sept. 28, 2020. (Erin Scott/Reuters)
Matthew Vadum
By Matthew Vadum
May 19, 2023Updated: May 20, 2023
biggersmaller Print
0:00
6:27
1
The Supreme Court has ruled unanimously in a delinquent taxpayer case that it is lawful for the IRS to secretly summons the bank records of third parties.
In other words, the nation’s highest court recognized that the Internal Revenue Service is not required to notify third parties who are not under investigation when seeking a summons for banking records thought to be relevant to the tax delinquency of another person.
One lawyer who briefed the Supreme Court said the new ruling gives the IRS “startlingly broad authority to pry into the financial records of people who may be only remotely connected to a delinquent taxpayer.”
The ruling, a victory for the Biden administration, came after the administration’s attempts to strengthen IRS enforcement efforts became an issue in the midterm congressional elections. The Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in August 2022, allocated almost $80 billion to the IRS to hire an extra 87,000 agents. Democrats say the IRS has long been underfunded, but Republicans say the extra money will be used to harass taxpayers.
At oral arguments on March 29 the justices had seemed sympathetic to the claim of the wife of a man who owed substantial taxes that the IRS went too far in pursuing her bank records without prior notice. At the same time, they acknowledged the agency needs effective tools to attempt to collect delinquent accounts.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s opinion (pdf) in Polselli v. IRS, court file 21-1599, which was issued on May 18.
The IRS claims Remo Polselli owes $2 million in assessed taxes and penalties and issued summonses without notice seeking financial records from banks. His bank records as well as those of his wife, Hanna Polselli, and law firms that performed work for them were sought.
The Biden administration said the IRS does not need to provide notice to third parties and that having to do so would give delinquent taxpayers “a head start in hiding assets.” Besides, the administration argued, persons involved in the process have access to the courts to combat alleged abuses.
Petitioner Hanna Polselli and the law firms argued that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit departed from a 2000 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, creating a circuit split the Supreme Court needed to resolve.
The 6th Circuit held that the disputed summonses were lawful because they were covered by an exception in the tax code pertaining to third-party record keepers. The 6th Circuit rejected the 9th Circuit’s holding that the exception applies only when the targeted taxpayer has a recognized legal interest in the records.
But the Supreme Court disagreed with Polselli and affirmed the 6th Circuit ruling.
“Congress has given the IRS considerable power to go after unpaid taxes,” Roberts wrote.
“One tool at the Service’s disposal is the authority to summon people with information concerning a delinquent taxpayer. But to safeguard privacy, the IRS is generally required to provide notice to anyone named in a summons, who can then sue to quash it. Today’s case concerns an exception to that general rule.”
The IRS is allowed to request the production of “books, papers, records, or other data” from “any person” who possesses information concerning a delinquent taxpayer, Roberts wrote.
“Given the breadth of this power, Congress has imposed certain safeguards” and generally has to give notice of the summons to any person identified in the summons, who is then entitled to bring a motion to quash the summons. But notice does not have to be provided if the summons is issued in aid of the collection of an assessment made or judgment rendered.
“In other words, the IRS may issue summonses both to determine whether a taxpayer owes money and later to collect any outstanding liability. When the IRS conducts an investigation for the purpose of ‘determining the liability’ of a taxpayer … it must provide notice … But once the Service has reached the stage of ‘collecting any such liability,’ … —which is a distinct activity—notice may not be required.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed a separate opinion concurring with the Supreme Court’s judgment. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined her concurring opinion.
Congress has “recognized that there might be situations, particularly in the collection context, where providing notice could frustrate the IRS’s ability to effectively administer the tax laws,” Jackson wrote.
“For instance, upon receiving notice that the IRS has served a summons, interested persons might move or hide collectable assets, making the agency’s collection efforts substantially harder.”
But when writing the tax code, Congress balanced the interests of the IRS and the taxpayer and “did not give the IRS a blank check, so to speak, to do with as it will in the collection arena,” Jackson wrote.
The Epoch Times reached out to Shay Dvoretzky, counsel for Polselli, and the U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the IRS, but had not received a reply from either as of press time.
Paul Sherman, counsel for the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, expressed alarm at the new ruling. The group filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Polselli.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling grants the IRS startlingly broad authority to pry into the financial records of people who may be only remotely connected to a delinquent taxpayer.
“That ruling raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns. Thankfully, the Court stressed that its ruling was narrowly focused on the statutory question before it. In a future case, the Court should address the constitutional limits on the government’s power to demand access to people’s most sensitive financial information.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Polselli, declined to comment.
-
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/03/techscape-geofence-warrants
-
https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/private-23andme-user-data-is-up-for-sale-after-online-scraping-spree/
A quarter of a million pages of federal regulations alone - all the way down to what light bulb can you read under - and nothing that even warns about this.
-
Curtailing Big Tech’s privacy abuses
Just how far companies can go to use AI to track our every move
By Joseph R. Pitts and Ed Towns
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Innovation, Data and Commerce subcommittee recently held a hearing on the need to better protect Americans’ data privacy rights in the new artificial intelligence era, particularly from the Big Tech behemoths.
The committee is right: Artificial intelligence, while poised to bolster efficiency, innovation, and economic growth, should be allowed to grow only if Americans can maintain their rights and retain control of their sensitive information.
AI is pulling their data — including their sensitive information — from all corners of the web in an attempt to build and refine large corporations’ business models and user profiling algorithms.
Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal highlighted this point well. The social media giant allowed Cambridge to collect millions of users’ data without their consent so the company could perfect its political digital advertising modeling. It used AI to make its digital campaigning tools even more targeted and powerful.
Less known but equally problematic is the example of Clearview AI, a U.S. company that collected photographs of children and adults for mass surveillance, facial recognition, and personal sale. This case study demonstrates just how far companies can go in using AI to track our every move.
While AI has become the technology whipping boy of the past few years, one of the testimonies Congress heard last month made a compelling point: The problem isn’t AI. It’s the lack of a comprehensive federal data privacy standard.
Even absent AI, for the past decade, unscrupulous companies have used and abused the fact that Congress has yet to define, enact and enforce privacy protections for today’s smart technology. Americans’ personal information is being continuously seized and monetized on too many digital channels as a result.
Drivers are victimized the second they get in their cars, especially their autonomous vehicles. These cars’ built-in sensors, cameras, microphones and GPS trackers are capturing unprecedented data about each user in what could become a $2 trillion revenue stream for the automotive industry. That’s a problem on its own, but it’s especially a concern when many of these car manufacturers have been found to have significant data security vulnerabilities.
Teenagers and families are often affected when they log in to social media websites and apps, where their information has sometimes been found to be tracked and mined without their consent.
Because minor privacy rules and statutes have not been updated meaningfully since 2013, even children are seemingly harmed by the absence of a federal privacy standard. We may have seen this when SchoolCare, a technology company used by over 3,000 schools nationally to connect students with health care services, sold itself to Findhelp, a social care company. A 2022 data breach that affected the information of 2 million minors followed. The Fourth Amendment protects Americans’ persons, homes and property from undue searches and seizures. But in this digital age, shouldn’t the same protections be extended to their digital presence and property? Shouldn’t we have property rights over our data and have the authority to say who can (or can’t) use it, and under what terms? The answer, of course, is yes, and the takeaway from Wednesday’s hearing was that Congress needs to create a federal privacy standard. While some pending bills, such as Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal’s Kids Online Safety Act, appear poised to pass and remedy small portions of this growing problem, a more comprehensive solution should also be considered. Some hearing participants spoke fondly of the framework presented in the American Data Privacy Protection Act, a bill that had resounding bipartisan support (and an impressive number of Democratic and Republican co-sponsors) last year but never received a rollcall vote. Perhaps Congress should consider resurrecting and reconsidering this framework in the upcoming lame-duck session. Truthfully, however, it doesn’t matter which solution members choose. All that matters is that it’s comprehensive enough to tackle the data privacy challenges that Americans have faced over the last decade — with not only AI but also the fast-moving digital economy more generally. The fate of their rights, their peace of mind, and their data security depend on it.
Joseph Pitts, a Republican who represented Pennsylvania in Congress from 1997 to 2017, and Ed Towns, a Democrat who represented New York in Congress from 1983 to 2013, served together on the House Energy and Commerce Committee
-
One of the outcomes of my various medical travails is that I now use the pharmacy in the hospital a couple miles from home, for several reasons:
• They appear to have a more direct track to obtaining drugs. During the various Covid etc. supply chain “interruptions” I had no trouble snagging the sundry drugs I take such as Creon, which allows my pancreas-free bod digest protein, among others, while my wife who uses a national chain (freaking CVS, more on them in a bit) had difficulties.
• They are nicer. Think I mentioned I can’t take NSAIDs any more unless I want to part ways with my kidneys, too, and so am take various pain meds, which it seems like causes the chain pharmacists to assume I’m shady or something as I always get an off vibe. Well my chart is attached to my meds at the hospital so no explanations needed, and no askance glances received.
• No ‘effin’ robocalls. CVS in particular has a system in place that not only endlessly pesters you about refills and such, but which they also make quite difficult to opt out of. I don’t like doing business with companies that seem to assume out the gate I belong in a memory ward, if not being an outright candidate for protective restraint. The latter would also make it easier for ‘em to force feed me their nostrums.
And now:
• They are constrained by HIPPA and have lawsuit averse beancounters working for ‘em providing impetus NOT to release my medical records without a modicum of concern over my privacy, unlike the companies, including freaking CVS, noted below.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/12/16/0549247/us-pharmacies-share-medical-data-with-police-without-a-warrant-inquiry-finds?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
-
We were founded under principles of federal checks and balances. Where FISA is concerned, there are none:
Cato Seeks Injunction To Obtain DOJ Internal FISA Audits
Cato @ Liberty / by Patrick G. Eddington / Feb 22, 2024 at 11:49 AM
Patrick G. Eddington
Maximum public transparency has never been achieved during prior congressional debates over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 electronic surveillance program. In an effort to break that pattern, the Cato Institute today filed a motion for a preliminary injunction (along with my declaration) against the Department of Justice (DOJ) over a long‐standing Cato Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking internal DOJ audits of the Section 702 program.
As I’ve noted previously, throughout its 15‐year history, the Section 702 program has been responsible for violations of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights at scale. Executive branch officials claim that the number of US‐person‐related queries of the Section 702 database have dropped from almost 3.4 million in 2021 to a mere several hundred thousand in 2022—still a radically high number of queries that generally appear to have had little if any connection to a genuine national security threat.
And there is one additional critical fact about the Section 702 program’s abuses that has never received significant press coverage or congressional attention.
The actual internal DOJ audits of the Section 702 program remain secret; only summaries of them have ever been made public. Accordingly, American citizens and Congress have no way of comparing DOJ claims about alleged reductions in violations with what the original audits themselves reveal about those violations.
In an effort to remedy that problem, in June 2023 Cato filed a FOIA request seeking the release of the Section 702 database audits available as of the date of the request. Instead of promptly processing Cato’s request, the DOJ sat on it for months.
Mindful of the looming April 19, 2024, expiration of the Section 702 authority, on February 8, Cato filed suit in federal district court in DC to compel disclosure of those records. With the DOJ still having failed to respond to Cato’s request, today Cato filed a preliminary injunction in the DC circuit court seeking expedited processing and release of the Section 702 query audits on or before March 29. We expect a decision from the court sometime next month.
Had the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) done its job—i.e., actually pushed the DOJ to make the full audits public—Cato would never have been forced to file the FOIA request and the subsequent legal actions in this case.
Instead, HPSCI chair Mike Turner (R‑OH) has been at war publicly and privately with other House GOP and Democratic members on the Judiciary Committee over their efforts to renew the Section 702 program only if it has a warrant requirement for the search of stored US persons data and a ban on the purchase of such information from data brokers. Turner’s actions should cause all House members to reevaluate whether or not the HPSCI should have any jurisdiction over surveillance programs that put Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights at risk.
https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-seeks-injunction-obtain-doj-internal-fisa-audits
-
Doubling up BBG's post here:
Body-by-Guinness
The WSJ Hearts 702
« Reply #96 on: March 28, 2024, 07:25:11 PM »
Oddly given their reputation the WSJ editorial board comes out in favor or renewing broad surveillance tools:
WSJ Ed Board Knifes Fourth Amendment, Betrays Journal's Reporters and Readers
Cato @ Liberty / by Patrick G. Eddington / Mar 27, 2024 at 12:19 PM
Patrick G. Eddington
Financial Surveillance
I’ve been in Washington over 30 years, but sometimes even I can be stunned by the short memories and shortsightedness of members of the Fourth Estate. Today’s example is the editorial board of the venerable (and usually pretty sane) Wall Street Journal.
The ostensible topic of their latest pronouncement (paywall) was the recent terrorist attack in Moscow, which appears to have been the work of violent Salafist terrorists. After offering some fairly standard pre‐Trump era Establishment fare on the need for still more US military action in the Islamic world, the WSJ ed board ended its piece by stating,
The ISIS comeback also argues for the House to overcome its disagreements and reauthorize Section 702 authority to surveil foreign communications even if it accidentally catches some Americans in the sweep. The House Intelligence bill contains enough safeguards without adding bureaucratic and political obstacles to rapid surveillance of real threats. Americans don’t want another attack on U.S. soil like last week’s horror show in Moscow.
Item 1: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 telecommunications intercept program does not “accidentally” sweep up the communications of US persons with no connection to criminal activity. The very structure and operational characteristics of both the 702 program and the global telecommunications system guarantee that the emails, text messages, and the like of innocent Americans are inevitably captured and stored in a vast database for years. It is a database that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have repeatedly been found to have used to conduct warrantless digital fishing expeditions on Americans not wanted for any crime.
That means that the communications of Journal reporters (especially those traveling to or reporting from overseas) are very likely getting swept up via the 702 program. The same thing is almost certainly happening to the digital letters to the editor or op‐eds submitted to the Journal by Americans overseas or who visit the Journal’s website to read its news coverage, etc. All of that, and literally millions of communications of other Americans are available for perusal by FBI agents with access to the 702 database. To be a cheerleader for a surveillance program that’s likely collecting the communications of its reporters and readers is probably not what those reporters or readers view as a legitimate government function or use of their taxpayer dollars.
Item 2: Multiple bills have been introduced to impose an actual warrant requirement for any federal law enforcement access to that stored data, but the most recent one introduced is a bipartisan Senate bill that, while not going as far as many privacy and civil liberties advocates would like, would be a vast improvement over where we are now with the 702 program. The House Intelligence Committee bill championed by the WSJ ed board would, if enacted, largely be another classic example of the old Capitol Hill game of “Let’s not but say we did” when it comes to surveillance reform. The Journal ed board seems not to recognize that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have long been “organizationally captured” by the various intelligence and law enforcement entities they were created to oversee in 1978. Both committees are cheerleaders for mass surveillance, not our protectors from it.
Item 3: The Journal ed board is engaged in a form of magical thinking with respect to mass surveillance. No mass surveillance program has ever stopped a terrorist attack on America. That was the case with the 702 program’s progenitor, the infamous STELLAR WIND program. It was also the case with the PATRIOT Act’s Section 215 telephone metadata mass surveillance program. And while the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) continue to make incredible claims about the program’s effectiveness, the actual FBI internal audits of the 702 program have never been released. Cato is trying to remedy that information deficit via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit currently before D.C. Circuit Judge Tanya Chutkan.
The WSJ ed board could’ve enlightened its readers with all of these publicly available, sourced facts. Instead, it chose to fearmonger in favor of a program that is not and never has been Fourth Amendment compliant in the way the Founders intended, a program that almost certainly sweeps up the communications of its own reporters, editors, and readers. How the mighty have fallen.